


As Through a Glass and Darkly

by lexicale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 117,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexicale/pseuds/lexicale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is the same, except for how it's different. Sam and Dean grow up with two mysterious guardians, a demon and an angel respectively, living in their shadows and preternaturally bound to them. They still move all around the country, saving people, hunting things. There's still an acceptance letter to Stanford and a family full of pain and anger. There's still an unbreakable bond of love and desperation between two brothers -- and there's still a man with yellow eyes with secrets enough to shatter the world.</p><p>A re-write of Supernatural with Hindu mythology as its basis instead of Christian mythology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My [spn-j2-bigbang](spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com) 2012 fic.
> 
> A huge, HUGE thanks to [Viridescence](http://viridescence.livejournal.com), who volunteered to jump into this mess and help me get unstuck when I couldn't even figure out where to go. She fearlessly betaed this beast, but more importantly, she got me to work on the problems at a point where I was ready to give in. Thank you so much ♥
> 
> Appreciation and congratulations are also in order for my fabulous artist [crimson_adder](http://crimson_adder.livejournal.com), who produced some STUNNING art, which you can see [here](http://crimson-adder.livejournal.com/36987.html).

  
_'So as through a glass, and darkly_   
_The age long strife I see_   
_Where I fought in many guises,_   
_Many names, but always me.'_

\- Through a Glass, Darkly  
George S. Patton, Jr.

 

The shuttered flutter of wings is an ever-present sound in Dean's nursery, in his world. 

He hears them when his mother lowers him into his crib, her voice a careful staccato over the steady beat and rustle of feathers, her words little more than garbled sounds to his ears. He hears the flutter in the morning when the sunlight splits through his window and wakes him up, the first things he's aware of: sunlight and wings. He hears them all the time, as constant and true as the heartbeat he heard in the womb.

When he's older, Castiel tells him: "I put my hand on your mother's stomach. Already, I felt your presence."

Cas has always been there. Like the stars or the moon or the sound of cars on the highway, Dean doesn't question his existence. The angel has always been there.

The demon, though. She's new.

She appears first as a bird. She perches on the sill of an open window, peering in and stretching her long neck. Her wings are long and shaped like a swallow's, but she is far larger. Her eyes are pitch black and glint when her head twitches, back and forth, ever watchful, a frill lining the top of her head.

"Birdie!" Dean says, pointing from his imprisonment, stuck in his high chair. He bangs a spoon against the plastic tray in front of him, and his mother hurries back over, blonde hair a mess and mushy peas on her face. 

"Dean, Dean please stop," she asks, a harried look to her that Dean is too young to recognize. There are lines under her eyes, the hushed tones of an argument from this morning long faded from Dean's mind but echoing regardless.

"Birdie!" he repeats, more insistent this time as the black heron extends one delicate leg, creeping into the kitchen. There is a furious flutter of wings, harder and angrier than Dean is used to, the two birds scuffling, and the stranger leaps out the window as Castiel chases it off, his white wings spread threateningly and beak parted. The dark bird beats its wings and vanishes, Dean staring with big eyes. His mother, oblivious, hears nothing.

"It's gone," Castiel says as he turns back to look at Dean.

"Where did it go?" Dean asks softly, almost afraid of the eternal specter that has watched him since before Dean was born.

"Where did what go, honey?" his mother asks, sounding tired, sounding worn, and Dean remembers only briefly the hissed sound of quarreling voices. The silver bracelet on his mother's wrist clinks and clanks lightly, like the sound of grief. Dean pushes her hand away, not talking to her.

"Don't worry about it, Dean," Castiel responds, and he flutters over from the window, white wings draping around the toddler's shoulders. "You need to be good for you mother today," he says, and Dean pouts. "Today will be a hard day."

\-----

Dean's life is simple, straight forward.

He lives in a room, in a house, in Lawrence, Kansas. He doesn't know quite what that means yet, doesn't have a firm grasp on the geography of the concept, but he knows his phone number and he knows his address and his mother says that that's what's important.

His room is across the hall from his parents. It's not too big and not too small and all his toys are there. Over the summer they moved his crib out and put in a long, skinny bed. Dean doesn't like how far it is from his feet to the end, doesn't like how open it is. He's afraid he's going to fall out in the night and just keep falling. Cas always tells him that he'd never let that happen. 

But the bed has its good points too. When Dean wakes up in the middle of the night he can run across the hall to his parents room, crawling into the hollow between them, listening to his father grunt and shift to make room, hearing his mother sigh out as one slim arm slips around him.

He sees his father in the morning, seated around the table next to their kitchen. He is tall with dark hair and eyes that stare sometimes at nothing at all, rough jaw leaned against rougher hands, but he is kind to Dean. He always smiles for Dean, likes to slide his hands under Dean's armpits and lift him up, and in those moments Dean feels both weightless and safe all at once.

They eat breakfast together every day before his father goes out to work -- cars, Dean knows, has spent weekends sitting on the floor in the garage attached to the house watching his dad under the carriage of their big black car, Cas guiding Dean's fingers away from the tools. He's been to his father's work a few times, knows Mr. Mike. He's sat on his mother's hip while she hands his father his lunch, tuning out the sound of their voices, almost always talking about something boring.

But most days he spends at home with his mother.

She is tall to his eye, not as tall as his father but still larger than life. She has corn yellow hair, a tumble of gold and hazel around her shoulders, and she walks fast, her eyes always facing straight ahead. She's always looking somewhere else, out of windows, out to the horizon, always seeing more than Dean can see. Sometimes he gets lost, tripping along trying to match her fast strides, and he clings to Castiel in her absence, but she always finds him again, always dries his tears.

She speaks softly when she speaks at all, hugs him tightly, but she is a ghost, the first one that Dean ever meets, though he doesn't know it at the time. When she and his father fight about it, Dean stays in his room and plays with his army men, setting them up in elaborate patterns and making sure to have Castiel put them up on the high places that he can't reach, even though his mother looks at him strangely when she finds them later.

He's too young to understand the concept of 'perfect,' but he's happy. He's happy as every three year old ever is, knowing only the world they know and nothing else, assuming the perfection of that world by sheer ignorance, by complete innocence. He doesn't know enough to know that things aren't perfect, only old enough to know that he wouldn't change anything.

His life is simple, and for whatever imperfections that might have existed, it's not a bad life, not by any stretch of the imagination.

It all changes in the fall, but he doesn't know that it does. Or rather, that it will.

It's in the fall that he sees the black heron for the first time, trying to crawl in through the kitchen window, watches as Castiel fights her away and tells Dean not to worry. Usually when Castiel says that Dean believes him, but for the first time in his life, the thought sticks. The memory of the black bird stays with him.

He sees her often out of the corner of his eye, a flash of black feathers always darting out of sight before he can turn his head. He asks the angel about her more than once, but Castiel only shakes his head.

"It's nothing, Dean," he says, the toddler leaned back against his chest, playing absently with plastic joint snakes, having locked them together into two massively long creatures. Dean's having them battle, head against Castiel's sternum.

Dean frowns though, at that answer. He doesn't know why, but he can always tell when the angel is lying. He never knows with his parents, always believes them completely and without question, but when Castiel speaks, it's different.

"It is _not,"_ the toddler insists, holding one snake in each chubby fist. "I know cause she was never there before."

Castiel's eyebrows raise.

"How do you know it's a she?" he asks.

"Cause she is," Dean answers as he clacks the snakes together, ignoring the look of consternation on the angel's face. Castiel never gets a chance to ask, though, the sound of Dean's mother walking through from the kitchen and into the living room announced by her shoes thumping on the hardwood floor of the entryway. Castiel gently unseats Dean, putting him down on the floor despite the toddler's frowns. Dean doesn't understand why his parents can't see Castiel, or why they're not allowed to know he's there(even though he tells them about him all the time anyway), but it is the way things are.

"Dean?" his mother asks, coming around the corner. She smiles when she sees him and Dean hears the heavier thump of his father just a few seconds behind. "Honey, your dad and I have something to tell you."

Dean perks up, associating that with something good, with a surprise or a holiday. He sets his snakes down, pushing himself to his feet in what he thinks is an expert manner, walking over to where his mother is seating herself on the couch. He climbs up next to hear, feeling her reach out to help but he says 'I can do it' and wiggles out of her grasp. She sighs and lets him, waiting until he's settled against her side.

A few seconds later his father joins them, falling back against the couch heavily, making the cushions rise for a second.

"Your father and I have some news -- good news," she clarifies, but the smile on her face doesn't look quite right. Her hand pats Dean's head.

They tell him that he's going to have a sibling, a little brother or sister. That there's a baby growing inside of his mother and at first Dean's confused, wonders if his mother _ate a baby,_ and it takes them a while to clear things up. Their voices are awkward and stilted, bouncing back and forth between one another as they try to explain and at first they're more confusing than they are illuminating.

But Dean understands. Or, at least, he _thinks_ he understands.

Dean understands the concept of a younger sibling, but not the execution.

He understands that other kids in the daycare have siblings. Big sisters, little sisters, brothers who pull hair and brothers who share trains. He understands that his life is going to be different, but he's not sure what he thinks about that. Not yet.

As the months pass he notices the changes. He doesn't like how his mother seems further away, her hair becoming thin and frail in the winter light, and he doesn't like the stress lines in his father's face. But he likes how their fights die down, how in the evening they seem to have something to talk about that isn't _Dean_ and _money_ and all the things that came before. Dean likes the extra time his mother spends at home, and how she's too tired to walk or run away, letting him put his hands on her slightly bulging stomach and telling him stories.

But he doesn't like the black heron. 

He can hear her at night, crying mournfully as she tries to get into their house, ever more desperate as the weeks pass into the months. But Castiel doesn't sleep -- is always standing at the window when Dean goes to sleep, and still there when Dean wakes up, and the heron can't enter. Castiel's face is always set in the morning, hard and grim, and Dean is used to not seeing him smile, but he isn't used to that faint look of worry.

His parents warble and flit about like nervous rabbits, mindless in their own fears and anxieties, but Castiel has always been constant. As hard and unbending as stone.

"What is it?" Dean asks one night, when it's still cold and outside his window is bright, moonlight reflecting on snow. His voice is hushed, not wanting to wake his parents, but also somehow aware that this subject is a secret. Taboo.

"She wants to see him," Castiel replies, sitting on the edge of Dean's bed, looking at the window. The curtains move, even though the window is shut and locked tight and there's no breeze. Dean winds his small fingers in to the loose fabric of Castiel's coat, swallowing hard.

"Don't worry." Castiel's voice is ever the same, unchanging, but Dean knows the comfort anyways, Castiel making sense to him in a way that none of the other adults do. The man puts his hand over Dean's hair, the flat of his palm resting on Dean's forehead. "You should sleep."

For a moment, Dean feels the slow tug, and almost takes the suggestion, body drifting back like the waves, the big boy bed that he'd acquired only a few months ago not as frightening and open as he'd once found it. But then he hears the black bird scream into the sky, everything sad and hurt and awful, so filled with inhuman pain and grief that Dean can't stand it. He launches himself at Castiel, holding tight to the man's side and burying his face away. The scream seems to go on forever, and it takes Castiel so long to finally put an arm around him, provide that safety, that for a moment Dean is convinced that the dark specter will get him -- burst through his window in a shower of glass and feathers, her eyes burning like the moon, full of vengeance. 

But it never comes. Eventually the cries die out, no one to hear them but Dean and Castiel. Dean's guardian, his constant sentinel, stays watch until he is asleep, and the fear fades from his dreams.

\-----

Ever since Dean was born, he's seen the white bird.

He doesn't know who Castiel is, doesn't even know that it's strange that he's there. He's always been there, always been part of Dean's world. He doesn't smile or laugh, he doesn't pick Dean up and swing him around. He doesn't play along and he doesn't sing, and he really doesn't do _anything_ that the adults do, but he looks after Dean. He protects him and Dean trusts Castiel without even thinking. It's automatic, instinctive. Castiel just is, and Dean is because Castiel is.

Dean accepts him as a given. All Dean knows is that the world would be _wrong_ without Castiel in it.

Dean has told his parents about Castiel a dozen times. His mother likes to pretend that she can see him, but Dean knows she can't. She always talks about Castiel like he's some little kid as well, like he's Dean's age. She'll leave a place for Castiel at the dinner table and talk to him like he's sitting there, even when Castiel is a bird and sitting over on the kitchen counter, preening his feathers. It frustrates Dean.

His father just frowns and ignores the whole thing.

Dean doesn't understand it, doesn't get why he can see the angel and no one else can. He _knows_ that Castiel is an angel, even though Castiel has never said any such thing. Dean's mother has always told him that angels watch over him, and Castiel watches over him, so Castiel must be an angel. It all makes perfect sense.

Things change though, when Dean meets Barnabas.

Barnabas is Dean's best friend.

The other kids make fun of Barnabas because he's so tall and trips over things and because his name sounds so funny. But Dean likes Barnabas, because Barnabas is the only one who can see Castiel.

"Where?" Barney asks, the first day they meet in Kindercare, eyes big and curious as Dean tells him about the invisible man who's always with him. The other kids ignore him or call him a liar, but Barney doesn't, so Dean points over to Cas, who is perched on one of the low bookshelves, loaded with thin paper collections stapled together, filled with short words printed large. He's blinking slowly, watching the playroom with his dark eyes half lidded, occasionally shuffling his feathers with his long beak.

"There," Dean says plainly, one chubby finger pressed out boldly. "Usually he's a man, but right now he's a bird."

"He can be a bird?"

"Yeah, but most of the time he isn't. Most of the time he wears a big coat and walks around behind me, but he says that sometimes being a bird is easier, even if he doesn't like it."

"Wow," Barney replies, eyes like saucers and full of wonder. 

"Do you see him?" Dean's eager. His parents ignore him when he talks about Castiel, and everyone else just smiles politely, like they don't know what to say. He wants someone to share this with, someone _besides_ Castiel, who is always there but rarely willing to answer questions.

"Yeah," Barney says with a quick bob of his head, too quick and eager to agree, but Dean's too young to recognize that. "Yeah, I see him. He's...He's a bird."

"Yeah!" Dean grabs Barney's hand in his own two, grin splitting his face, and Barney smiles in return. After that, Dean tells Barney everything, shares with him everything, and they play together every day that his mom drops him off at the center. Castiel warns Dean that he shouldn't, that no one else should know about Castiel's presence, but Dean doesn't know what the word 'presence' means, and when he asks Castiel, Castiel just uses even bigger words. So Dean figures that sometimes Castiel is wrong, even if he is a grown up.

He figures that until the day before Christmas, when his mom tells him to be good and she'll be back in a few hours, once she's finished her shopping, and Dean runs in to look for his friend. Barney is there, but he's playing with some other kids, some new ones that Dean doesn't recognize, but he thinks that other people's moms have shopping to do, because the center is full to bursting.

"Barney," he says, reaching out to shake his friend's shoulder, but Barney jerks his shoulder away and gives Dean a nasty look.

"Leave me alone."

"Let's play."

 _"No._ Leave me alone. You're weird, and crazy, and my mom says I shouldn't play with you."

Dean frowns deeply, a little hurt, but more angry, and he crosses his arms across his chest, puffing up.

"I'm _not_ crazy," he says defensively.

"You tell people stupid stories about having an invisible friend. You were lying -- there is no bird."

Dean gapes at him, just _confused_ now, because Barney has _seen_ Castiel. They talk about him almost every day, and Barney talks about Castiel's white feathers, or his brown coat, or the way he never smiles. It doesn't matter to Dean that everything Barney has said was something that Dean had already told him.

"I'm not lying! I'm not a liar! You saw him."

"Nuh-uh," Barney replies, getting to his feet, the other kids he was playing with watching the two of them fight. "I'm not _crazy_ like you, and I told Ms. Cavanaugh too. I told everyone how crazy you are."

Dean punches Barney inexpertly in the chest, and Barney goes down, the two of them fighting and biting and scrabbling at each other until one of the adults gets over there, wading through the squalling children to pick the two of them apart, Dean twisting desperately to get a few more good hits in, because he's _not_ crazy, and he's _not_ a liar, and Castiel is standing over in the corner, always watching.

Later, in one of the cold offices of the building, a lady with short blonde hair and a frilly collar asks him to talk about the man that follows him everywhere, the man in the "trenchcoat" that is always watching him, and Dean tells her that he's not lying. Dean tells her that Castiel is his friend who watches over him, that never leaves him, that his parents can't see Castiel, but Dean's not crazy.

"Does Castiel ever hurt you?" the lady asks, and Dean just blinks owlishly at her, because that's the stupidest thing he's ever heard.

All the same, at the end of the day, his mother looking tired and worn, hand on her slightly bulging stomach, stands in the office and Dean watches her through the window from the hallway, watches her nod her head as the frilly collar lady talks to her. 

After that, Dean decides he won't talk about Castiel.

\-----

For months Dean keeps to his resolution.

When he's around other people, when his mom and dad can see him, he doesn't say anything to Castiel. Doesn't say anything _about_ Castiel. The angel seems pleased about this, never saying 'I told you so,' and Dean's glad for that.

Even so, Dean feels his father's watchful eye on him sometimes, when he and Castiel are playing together, and though he ignores it, Castiel does not.

Dean's father is tall with dark hair and a set expression. He walks fast, hands usually tucked into his pockets and shoulders hunched. There's a little grey in his hair that Dean just accepts as normal and his cheeks are always covered in scratchy, rough stubble. He rarely smiles, but when he does, it's because Dean's looking at him.

Dean likes to watch his dad whenever he's home. He watches the way his father's eyes track everything around him, the tension in his frame, the shadow in his muddy eyes that Dean's too young to understand. All he knows is that everything changes when his dad looks at him and sees him watching. He'll stop being an army man, as his mother says, and become 'Daddy.' When Dean's father is like that, it's easier to hug, to run into open arms, to play with diggers in his sandbox. Dean never feels unsafe or unsure around his father. He never has to worry when his dad is there. He knows his father will always look after him. He knows his father loves him.

They work on the car together, an old '67 Impala that his dad bought when he'd come back from fighting. He doesn't talk about the war much, but Dean knows his dad went over the ocean to fight bad guys -- and that seems pretty cool to him. With his father's help, Dean slowly learns the names of the tools, learns which one his dad means when he calls out from under the car's carriage, one broad hand extended. Dean learns the parts of the car and what they do, and if he forgets or he brings the wrong item, Dean's dad never gets mad. He just huffs and smiles and shakes his head.

Castiel doesn't like him though.

Dean doesn't understand why. His dad is awesome. His dad is rides on broad shoulders and walks in the park. His dad is playing catch in the front yard and learning how to use the lawnmower in the back. His dad is great lifts up into the air and twirling around before being tugged down into a tight embrace, and in those moments, Dean knows all his right with the world. His dad can be quiet, distant sometimes but he'll let Dean sit in his lap and just be there, just exist and say nothing. Dean's dad isn't always there, but he's always kind, and Dean thinks that that's what matters.

The angel seems to disagree.

"He's a killer of men," Castiel says, one evening when Dean pushes him to admit that Dean's father is the best. The words make Dean frown, make him feel automatically defensive.

"He's _not!"_

"It is what it is," the angel replies, disaffected. He's looking over at the window in Dean's room -- Dean's _new_ room, his big boy room, all his toys and his bed and everything moved in here, because his old room is being prepared for the _baby._ The baby that Dean would be happy to never hear about again.

"He killed bad guys." Dean pouts as he says the words.

"That is not how war works."

It's not a subject that a four year old can grasp, but Dean doesn't really even get that. He just gets angry and refuses to talk to Castiel for the rest of the day. He doesn't understand the difference between dislike and unease. He doesn't understand that when the angel looks at Dean's father, it's not with hate -- it's with wary preparation.

Either way though, Dean figures it works out, because just as much as Castiel doesn't like Dean's father, Dean's father doesn't seem to like Castiel either.

Dean hasn't mentioned the angel for months, but that doesn't mean that his dad has forgotten. That doesn't mean that his dad doesn't _notice._

The whole thing just frustrates Dean and he wishes his parents and Castiel could just _talk_ to one another. Castiel is family, just as much as either of his parents and way more than the baby. Dean doesn't understand why they have to fight at all -- or why they have to fight _through_ Dean.

All he knows is that back when he still talked about Castiel to people, both his father and his angel would frown in equal measure.

It's the first day of May when Dean's dad finally brings it up, Dean strapped into his seat in the back of the car, legs kicking a little in the footwell. His head is turned to the side, watching the reflection of trees on the grass as they drive by, heading towards the local park where there's tryouts for Little League today. His dad has been talking about it for the last few months, told Dean all kinds of stories of his own time in softball, even stories about playing it when he was in the army. His father so rarely talks at all -- and especially about his past -- Dean always listens with rapt attention when he does.

Dean hadn't been particularly excited about Little League before, not until he'd spent the afternoon listening to his father talk. Now he can't wait. He wants to be just like his dad when he grows up.

"Dean, stop that," his father says. Castiel slides a hand over to keep Dean's little feet from kicking the back of the driver's seat. Dean frowns at the angel, sitting next to him in the back, but Castiel takes no notice.

"Dean," his dad continues, voice contemplative and the car rolls slowly around a bend, the new transmission put in just last week. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Mmhmm?" Dean looks down at his glove. It still smells strongly of leather, bought at the store only the weekend before and Dad had shown him how to start to wear it in, but it's still kind of stiff, at least for Dean's small hand. He flexes it some, pressing his knuckles into the creases.

"I know this is a big deal to you," his dad continues, the music on the radio turned down low, just a buzz of guitar rifts in the background. "And I don't expect anything over night but... I think it's time we started talking about this imaginary friend of yours."

Dean blinks and looks up. His dad keeps talking.

"Now, your mother and I don't see eye to eye on this, and we've had plenty of discussions about it, but... After the incident at Christmas, and with the new baby about to be born--"

Dean frowns at the mention of the baby. _Again_ with the baby.

"--I really think you're getting a little old for this."

"I've been good," Dean mutters sullenly. "Haven't talked to no one about him."

He really has been good. He's kept quiet. He learned his lesson. People don't understand Castiel and talking about him, or _to_ him, when others are around, only leads to trouble.

"I know," his dad replies, pulling out from a red light as it turns green. "And I'm real proud of you for that -- but I'm not blind. I know you're still talking to him."

"But Mom said Castiel is fine," Dean defends, riled at the unfairness of it. It isn't like he can just _ignore_ Castiel. He's right there. "Mom said he was fine. She even used to make food for him -- which is dumb cause he doesn't eat. But still!"

It had been months since his mother had done any such thing, long since the debacle at the daycare, long since she started getting bigger and bigger and would ask Dean if he wanted to feel the baby kick. But he still remembers when she used to make a sandwich for him and a sandwich for Castiel.

"Like I said, kiddo, your mom and I disagree," his father says. "I just-- I know this Ca-steel is important to you, but you're four years old and about to be a big brother. Don't you want to be a good big brother? Besides, you're going to start school next year. You'll have the opportunity to make plenty of real friends."

"Castiel _is_ real," Dean reminds him, chagrined. He hates when people treat it like the angel isn't there, like he's all in Dean's head. As if Dean just _imagines_ being picked up or having his toys brought over to him. Castiel is real. Dean knows it. The angel is right there, right next to him, and always has been. He's as real as Dean's father and Dean thinks the whole thing is incredibly unfair. He hates having to mediate between his parents and his angel.

He likes his dad and he likes Castiel. He doesn't know why it always seems like he has to choose.

"I know, I know," his dad says placatingly, like he doesn't really know at all. "But if you keep up with this, you're just going to have more incidents like you did at the daycare. You don't want that, do you?"

Dean doesn't respond, just crosses his arms and looks to the side, at Castiel's trenchcoat, frowning deeply as he thinks of Barney, thinks of the excitement when he'd thought that someone else could finally see the angel. Could finally prove that Dean wasn't just making things up. The fact that it wasn't true, that it had all been a lie, only made Dean feel worse now than he did before.

Some days he wondered if he really _was_ making Castiel up, but he looks up at the angel's stoic face and it's hard to imagine that he's not really there.

"Look, I'm not saying it has to be today, or even tomorrow," his dad continues. "But you're a big boy now and people get worried when you talk about a fully grown man following you around places. I know that--I know that I'm not around a whole bunch. But you know that's cause of work, right? You know that, right, buddy?"

"Huh?" Dean asks, blinking at the sudden change in topic, not keeping up, and he turns back to look at the back of his father's head, at his watchful eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I know it's kinda sad that I have to be out all of the time. If I could, I'd spend every minute of the day with you, champ. Thing is, though, we can't pay for our house or our food or anything else if I don't go to work. I'm not choosing anything else over you, okay? I'm doing it _for_ you."

"It's fine, Daddy," Dean agrees, still confused. He glances to Castiel for context, but the angel remains facing forward. Dean looks at his dad's eyes in the mirror. "I don't understand."

"I know you feel like I'm abandoning you, but I'm not."

"You're not abandoning me." Dean frowns.

"You don't need Ca-steel. I'm always gonna be here for you."

"I--...Okay, Daddy," Dean agrees after a pause, but he still doesn't understand. He has Castiel(whose name Dean's dad always pronounces wrong, like Castiel is some kind of stupid superhero or something, and not an angel watching over him), and he has his father, and he has his mother, but he's never connected any of them like that. He's never seen any of them as either/or. They're his family -- all the family he needs, too, though he can't seem to convince his parents of that.

Castiel is constant. A force that Dean knows is never going to leave him. Castiel will always accept him, always know him, and nothing that Dean ever does or says will drive the angel away. It's different from his dad. Dean wants to be better for his dad. He wants to be good at Little League and good at fixing cars. He wants to grow up and be strong, grow up and fight bad guys and be good at things. He wants to make his father proud in a way that he just doesn't care with Castiel.

Castiel will never be proud of Dean because he'll never be disappointed in Dean.

Their connection exists outside of all of that.

"Alright, well," his dad says with some finality, pulling them into a parking spot at the park. After he's put the car in park he hooks an elbow over the back of the bench and turns to look at Dean, long mouth half quirked in a smile. "I'm glad we got to talk about this some, kiddo. It's--...Well. It's important. Especially with the baby coming. You're growing up." He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. "Can't believe it's been four years..."

Dean puffs up a bit at that, at the idea that he's _growing up._ He doesn't really understand what his dad was talking about but it doesn't matter.

His dad thinks he's growing up. There's no way for the rest of the day to not be wonderful.

They go out into the park, throwing the softball around between them. The afternoon sun turns lazy and lowers, and the tryouts take about two hours. Dean is eventually sorted into one of the local teams and he's so proud of himself, so full of himself that he can't even _breathe._ His dad claps him on the back, the two of them talking as they make their way across the green grass, shadows stretching long and no one pays any attention to the large white bird perched at the top of the bleachers.

They all drive home, Dean's dad letting him sit up front so long as he promises "not to tell his mother," and Dean feels big, feels like his dad's sidekick and partner. Old enough to sit up front. Old enough to keep a secret.

They're barely home five minutes when Dean hears his dad yelling for him, clutching a note he'd found in the kitchen.

"C'mon Dean, we gotta get back in the car," he says with urgency, tone a little piqued.

"What?" Dean asks, frowning. "Why?"

"Your mother left us a note -- she's having the baby, Dean. She's already at the hospital so we have to go and meet her. Let's go, get your shoes back on."

Dean doesn't have any time to protest. His dad hustles him out, pushing him along and Dean doesn't have much choice, still dressed in his clothes from the park, grass stains on his knees. He tugs his sneakers back on as they run out to the car. Dean's worried about his mom, wants to find her, but at the same time he wants to stay home. He's tired and hot from the long day and he just wants to watch some TV. Besides, he doesn't want to have anything to do with the baby.

His family is fine the way it is.

"It will be alright," Castiel tries to assure him, when the two of them get in the car, Dean's dad reversing out of the driveway and onto the road, a little faster than Dean's comfortable with. He looks over at the angel and reaches out, small hand gripping hard in the beige coat.

In that moment, Dean doesn't care what anyone says, even his dad. Castiel is real.

Dean needs him to be.

\-----

The hospital is chaos.

It's not so bad straight in the door, lots of people sitting in chairs, but then his dad is asking at a desk, his voice louder than normal, the same stern volume it gets when Dean's been bad, the same clipped bark that had echoed when Dean had run out in the middle of the street last fall.

His mom calls it 'the Marine voice.'

His dad is walking fast, just like he always does, too fast for Dean to keep up with, and he almost falls behind twice before his father's big hand takes his, grasps him firm and tugs him along, Dean jogging to make pace. They take the elevator up to another floor and Dean has questions, a million questions, where they are, what's going on, where Mom is, what's going to happen next, but his dad isn’t listening to him, isn't even looking down at him, and Dean can't seem to catch his attention. The lack of understanding, the lack of context, throws Dean off, makes him scared of things he doesn't know.

It's worse when they finally do find his mom.

The two of them turn a corner, into a room with a cold looking bed and machines and doctors, and everything is suddenly _noise_ and _sound_ and voices yelling over each other, his mother's most of all. It's loud and confusing and Dean looks to his dad only to feel him let go of his hand to talk over to the bedside, to Dean's mother, reaching out for her. Dean stands awkwardly in the middle of the floor, people rushing by him, and after a while he lifts his hands, fingers playing absent games with one another just to have something to touch. A nurse nudges him gently to one side, steering him towards a chair to get him out of the way of the door. Dean sits on the edge of it.

He turns to Castiel, to ask him one of his million questions, but the angel, even the angel, _his_ guardian angel, is as wrapped up in the stupid baby as everyone else. Castiel is looking over at the bed, white feathers tucked in close as he watches and Dean feels hard anger fill him.

It's then, at that point, that Dean resolves to go off on his own. It's not like anyone would notice. It's not like _he_ wants to be here.

With everything that's going on, all the nurses and the doctor and his dad running around, Dean just wiggles his way through the bodies and out into the hospital corridors. He glances back at the room and grins, knowing very well that he's up to no good, but feeling no remorse. He only feels that _afterwards,_ when his mother looks at him sadly or his dad wears that look of quiet disappointment. In the moment, though, it just feels good to get out from the eyes of the adults.

To be like an adult himself -- alone and brave.

At first, he's so involved with that feeling of silly freedom that he doesn't notice that Castiel isn't there. There's never _been_ a moment when Castiel wasn't there. It's just something that Dean takes for granted.

The hospital is busy enough that everyone assumes he belongs to the person next to them, and no one takes responsibility. He feels giddy with independence, and soon enough he's running down the hall to the nurse's station, where a stern looking woman tells him he's not allowed to run, and where are his parents? Dean immediately composes himself, not wanting to be taken back, not yet, and points in the direction of the waiting area, the nurse letting him go as he makes his way into the rows of plastic chairs, too busy to check that he gets to someone he knows.

Dean feels smug with his escape, bouncing on the balls of his feet when he hears a stifled sob. 

He turns to see a woman sitting on one of the chairs, her long black hair a mess and her skinny fingers woven through it, pressing against her scalp as she cries through grit teeth. She looks like she's hurting even worse than Dean's mom, who was moaning back in the hospital room.

"Hi," Dean starts, not normally shy, but feeling strangely hesitant.

The woman sniffs and looks up. Her eyes are pitch black and shiny like marbles, her nose and cheeks red from tears. For a flash second, Dean is scared of her eyes, the way they remind him of the black winter sky and something awful coming, but then she wraps her arms around herself, sobbing softly, and his fear rushes out of him on a breath.

"Why're you crying?" he asks, voice too soft in the loud and busy hospital waiting room, a garbled voice droning through the speaker system. But the woman hears him, glancing at him once more.

"Someone very special to me is being born today." She pauses and sniffs, running her stick like hand under her nose. "And I can't get to him. I miss him _very_ much..."

Dean takes a small step closer, almost convinced she'll reach out and snatch him, run off with him and shove him into the trunk of a car like the mob does in his dad's gangster movies. Cement shoes and a date with the river.

"Why can't you get to him?"

She doesn't answer though, just shakes her head, looking away down to the corridor, back to where Dean's mother is screaming, and without knowing why, Dean reaches out, putting a hand over her wrist. Her blood beats cold and hard, everything the opposite of him, but she turns to look at him with something like surprise, blinking, and the black of her eyes recedes, turning normal and human.

He realizes, in that moment, that she's actually quite beautiful.

"Can you do something for me?" she asks, voice hushed.

"What is it?"

"Can you--... Tell Sammy I love him. Tell him that I'll find him soon," she murmurs, and Dean doesn't understand. He doesn't get to ask, though, because in the next second Castiel is there, all white feathers and dangerous, curved talons. They dig into the woman with a fearful screech, and Dean stumbles back, seeing her dissolve into a small shape -- that black heron, its sharp beak stabbing at the harrier, the two birds twisting around in a frightful battle.

No one else sees it though. No one else hears it.

All that happens is an old woman leans over, asking Dean if he's alright, but Dean's eyes are locked on the birds and the rush of black and white feathers as their cries pierce the air.

A few minutes later, Dean feels his father's hand grab his upper arm, hauling him to his feet and yelling something at him, that desperate worried anger written across his face, and Dean's feeling of independence rushes away. Behind him, he hears Castiel let out a loud cry, and call of victory, and there is the flutter of wings -- wings that are unfamiliar to Dean -- and Dean knows that the heron woman is gone.

"Your mother was giving _birth_ today, Dean," his dad says, drawing Dean's attention back as he squats down so that he's at Dean's level, looking him square in the eye, but Dean refuses to meet his father's stern gaze.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

"She was so worried about you. She didn't need that kind of aggravation. Not today." His dad's large hands come to rest on Dean's slim shoulders, like two lead weights meant to drag him down. Castiel is standing behind Dean's dad, his face covered in neat little scratches, his lips a taut line, and Dean wonders if Castiel is mad too.

He's never seen him mad, and Dean starts to cry.

He's never disappointed Castiel before. No matter what he did, or how bad he was, no matter if it got him a spanking or even that time he made his mom cry when he ran to hide in a bush to scare her, and she couldn't find him, Castiel had never been mad at him. Cas was just his friend and guardian, always there, always listening. 

Dean presses his knuckles to his eyes, lips stretching down and tight, and his dad is mumbling something. His dad is kissing his forehead, telling him it's okay, but his dad doesn't know that it's not him that Dean is crying over.

Eventually they go back down the hall, Dean following his dad, his small hand held almost painfully in his father's much larger one, until they get back to his mother's room. It's much quieter now, but Dean is sullen, and doesn't want to approach the bed. He's thinking of the heron woman, tears in her eyes, and the battle between her and Cas that no one else can see. He's thinking of that feeling of independence, and the disappointed look on Castiel's face.

But all of that goes away, ten minutes later, when a nurse comes into the room with a wriggling package in a blue blanket and hands it to his mother. Dean is sitting on a chair, ignoring his parents, until his father comes over to him and tells him to hold out his arms. When Dean does, the wriggling blanket to pressed down against his chest, and Dean sees his little brother for the first time.

Sam is a revelation.

Except Dean doesn't know that word yet. Wouldn't even understand the concept if someone had explained it to him.

All he knows is that when his mother passes the baby to his father, who passes him carefully into Dean's arms and tells him the baby's name, the world is different now. He is a different person.

He is a big brother.

For the first time, he's completely unaware of Castiel, of his parents. The only thing in the whole world that matters is in his arms, and staring up at him with freakish eyes.

"You're really ugly," Dean says, quiet and conspiratorial, and kisses the baby's smooshed up face.

\-----

They don't bring the baby home until two days later.

Dean's dad takes him home in the meantime, tucking him in at night and telling him they'll go see Mommy in the morning, but it isn't her that Dean misses.

"I wonder what Sammy's doing..." Dean murmurs into his sheets, Castiel sitting on the edge of the bed like always, hands dangling between his knees. His blue eyes search the room but he doesn't look as tense as he has the last nine months. It takes Dean a moment to realize he can't hear the cries of the heron woman. She isn't there.

Even so, Dean doesn't ask -- maybe because he doesn't want to get into trouble, doesn't want to remind Castiel of how he'd run away earlier in the day.

"Probably sleeping," the angel replies, monotone. "You slept a lot when you were first born."

"You were there?" Dean asks sleepily, but he always knows the answer. Castiel was always there.

"Yes," Castiel replies. "Your mother stayed in the hospital for a few days. You were a breech birth."

Dean doesn't know what that means, but he doesn't care enough to ask. All he thinks about that night is Sammy -- what Sammy's doing, what Sammy's thinking, what Sammy eats and what he dreams about in his squishy head, only newly made. For months Dean's wanted nothing to do with the baby, has even hated it, in darker moments, but now he just wishes that Sam, _Sammy,_ not 'the baby,' was here.

When they finally do bring him home, Dean is ecstatic.

Except they take Sam straight to the nursery and won't let Dean hold him at all. His mother puts the newborn down and his father helps her across and hall and into bed. Sam, meanwhile, is crying.

"They said he was like this down in the nursery at the hospital too," his mom says, leaning back against the headboard as she looks up at her husband. "He just doesn't seem to _sleep,_ John. I don't know what to do."

"He just needs some time and routine," Dean's dad replies, pulling the covers up. "You remember how it was with Dean. They like routine. Once he settles down and gets used to things it'll be better, just like before, you'll see."

"It wasn't like _this_ with Dean..." She murmurs, but quiets soon after and Dean's too young to see she's exhausted. He's guided out of the bedroom by his father, hoping that this means he'll get to hold Sammy now, but instead his dad takes him downstairs to make him a snack. The rest of the day Dean listens to Sam crying over the baby monitor, watches his dad try to feed the baby with a bottle from the fridge and hears the crying continue even when he goes to bed that night. Castiel is tense and watching the windows again, pacing back and forth in Dean's room.

Dean doesn't care though. He's not interested in Castiel's pacing or his parents' talking or even his fear of the heron woman. He just wants to go to Sam.

"I don't know what's wrong with him," Dean's mother says, a week later. His dad is out at work, having been able to take off for only so long, and now his mom's hair is a mess, her eyes tired and she's barely bouncing the baby in her arms as she tries to get him to settle. Sam doesn't care though. He's just had his lunch, but he's still fussy, still unhappy. He jerks and twists in his mother's arms, as much as he can, swaddled tight and muscles still weak.

"Here," Dean offers, holding his arms out, wanting to hold Sam just like he has for a week now, but his mother shakes her head, looking worn down.

"Not now, Dean," she says distractedly as she walks away, walking around the room with Sam crying and wailing, that tinny high baby wail, nasal and strange and Dean frowns.

"Let me hold Sammy," he insists and his mother makes a sound of frustration, verging on anger and too tired to hold it back.

 _"No,_ Dean. I said not now. Your brother has been crying since four o'clock this morning. I need him to sleep."

"I can _help,"_ Dean asserts, knowing he can. He _knows_ Sam. He doesn't know how but he does. Always has. Even Castiel seems far away when Dean looks at his brother.

"Dean!" his mother snaps, an edge of desperation in her voice, then sighs and tries to temper herself. "Dean--...You're four years old. I appreciate that you want to help, I do, but your father is at work all the time and your brother won't stop crying and I just need--...I just need a few minutes. I need him to just stop crying for...for a _few minutes."_

Dean frowns, four years old and unable to understand the stress of a new mother, but _she_ doesn't understand _this._ She doesn't understand that Sam is looking for his bird, his other. She won't see Sam's demon just like she's never seen Dean's angel. She doesn't understand the words that Sam is screaming, but Dean does.

 _"Please,"_ he begs, holding out his arms, and his mother turns to look at him, rings under her eyes and her lips pursed. For a moment, they stand there like that, a tableau, Castiel at the window and looking out while Sam continues to cry.

"...Alright," his mother says, finally, letting out a long breath. "I suppose it can't hurt."

She walks across the living room and leans over, carefully transferring the bundle into Dean's arms. Sam is heavier than Dean remembers and his frame shifts with the weight, little muscles bunching to prove themselves up to the task -- taking care of Sammy. It's something he knows instinctively, something he never wants to fail at.

"It's okay..." He murmurs, looking down at his brother's pinched up little face, his blotchy red cheeks. The baby looks up at Dean in turn, blinking big, alien eyes and sniffling a bit, but he begins to quiet.

"Support his head, honey," his mother reminds, stroking what little hair there is on Sammy's soft baby head. The seconds on the big clock tick by and Sam goes softer, breath still coming fast from his fit and nose still making wet sounds, but the tears begin to abate, but by bit.

Their mother looks blessedly relieved, like _she_ might just start crying, but she also looks surprised.

"I guess he really does recognize his big brother..." She murmurs, more to herself than anything.

"He's just lonely," Dean explains. Sam blinks up at him, uncomprehending.

"He's a baby, Dean," their exhausted mother replies, baffled, even as she shakes her head. Her colicky baby finally goes silent, seated in his big brother's arms. "He can't _be_ lonely."

Dean doesn't try to explain it to her. He doesn't think she can understand. He loves his mother and his father, but they can't see Castiel, don't believe in him, and Dean knows they wouldn't believe him if he tells them about the black bird either. They won't do anything but cast those _looks_ at each other if Dean says that Sam's bird is missing, is kept away by an over protective angel. They won't even know what it means, the depth of what it would feel like, to be separated from that.

Even Dean doesn't know that.

He's never had to be separated from Castiel before.

After that day, he spends a lot of time thinking about it. Sam continues to fuss, continues to wail and scream for his demon, and Dean doesn't understand why Castiel hates her, why he keeps her away or why he fought with her so viciously in the hospital that day. At first, he doesn't know what to do about it.

Not until the first time the dark haired woman sneaks into the house, when Sam is two months old.

Dean wakes up when Castiel moves away from him, goes to leave Dean's room.

"Wait," Dean mumbles, sleep addled, but Castiel doesn't seem to hear, disappearing down the hallway. Dean stumbles out of bed, trying to catch up and wake up at the same time, and he only just manages to grab Cas's hand, right outside of Sammy's nursery. Inside, he sees the heron woman, tears on her cheeks and frozen over Sammy's crib. He's burbling for her, and Castiel's expression sets.

"No," Dean says, firmly, and Castiel looks down at him. _"No,"_ he repeats, more emphatically.

"Dean--" Cas starts, but Dean doesn't let him.

"No! She just wants to sing him a song. Let her sing him a song." He knows he's being too loud, that he'll wake his parents, who won't understand because they never see Castiel, or the dark haired woman. Castiel seems to be aware of this, glancing worriedly at the door behind him to the master bedroom, then sighs. He looks over at the woman.

"...Fine," he says, as if someone pulled the word out of him, and her expression goes startlingly bright.

She reaches into the crib and picks up the baby, cradling him to her chest, and she lets out a sob of relief. Sam goes quiet, and Dean is a little jealous, but he doesn't say anything. He knows how he'd feel, if someone tried to take Castiel from him.

In the nursery, the woman sings a warbly, off key lullaby, made of words Dean doesn't understand, something far too old, in a language too long dead. Castiel just stands at the threshold, shoulders squared in the doorway, and he doesn't move until the woman is gone, having laid the sleepy infant back in his crib.

"C'mon," Dean murmurs sleepily, tugging on Castiel's hand. The man wears the same steely expression, but eventually turns, and lets the child lead him back to their room. 

After that, Castiel turns a blind eye when the woman sneaks in to sing Sam to sleep.

\-----

The night of the fire changes everything.

"Wake up!" Castiel's voice is pitched and panicked and Dean's never heard that before. He wakes up, his guardian's hands gripping Dean's shoulders painful tight.

"Hurting me," he flubs out, coming around confused and scared.

"You have to get up, Dean, it's time," Castiel says, looking apologetic as he eases his grip on Dean's shoulders. Outside of Dean's room, the hallway is glowing orange bright, a flickering, hot light that threatens to come for him like a monster. He sucks in a breath and runs out into the corridor, looking down to where his parents' room is, to where _Sammy_ is, but his bare feet are frozen, body locked in mortal terror. He knows he needs to get to Sam, beyond anything else.

"Dean!" Castiel is yelling. "Outside!"

"No!" Dean protests, the idea of leaving Sam to that horrible light too much, and the fear of Castiel forcibly dragging him outside breaks his paralysis, and he runs towards the end of the hall. He never gets there though -- a second later, his father's figure barrels out of the nursery, hitting the opposite wall before running forward. He almost runs over Dean before he sees him.

"Take your brother outside as fast as you can," he orders, thrusting Sam's squalling body into Dean's too weak arms. "Now, Dean! Go!"

Dean hiccups on a breath, not knowing what's happening, but he turns, he runs, skidding down the stairs and always only a second away from dropping Sam. Every steps threatens to be the one that will send Dean falling head over heels, Sam crushed beneath him. The fear beats away in his heart, pumping through his veins, capillaries crying _Sammy Sammy Sammy,_ and he yanks on the front door before remembering how to unlock it, feeling that orange light on his back, hunting him down like prey.

Out in the front yard, the air seems so much cooler, so much more open and free, November chilly and leafless, and Dean turns to look at his house, his childhood home, instead of running. It's the first time he sees the flames, burning their way over the windows until the glass cracks then shatters, and the flood of sudden oxygen into the space causes the fire to explode outwards, flaming wood and glass showering down towards him. The world turns black with feathers, and he ducks down automatically, hearing the debris falling around him like the most awful rain. He's breathing hard, face pressed into her down, her arms around both him and Sam and her body sheltered them, the shrapnel bouncing off of her wings.

Dean pulls back after a little struggle, and he looks up at her face. The heron woman looks at him, then down at Sam, her hand moving to touch the baby.

Before she makes contact though, his father bowls into them like a line backer, and Dean’s swept up, carried away from the house and the fire and the last pieces of his mother that remained in this world.

For the first time, Dean can't hear the flutter of wings, drowned out as it is by the terrible fury of hellfire.

\-----

There's no body left by the flames, nothing but ashes, but they hold a funeral anyway.

Dean believes that his mother is in the empty casket, knowing only that that's how funerals are supposed to be. He knows that there is a coffin and that there is a person in the coffin and that the coffin goes into the ground. He learns this intimately, watching it all happen.

He stands on the edge of the grave, watching the men lower the casket with straps; peers in as if he can figure it all out. His father's broad hand steers him back, and Castiel's hands end up on his shoulders. He wants to talk to the angel, but he hasn't said anything since the night of the fire. He's not certain what questions to ask anymore.

They're staying with Mr. Mike and his wife, Kate. 

After the funeral he can hear his father and Mike talking -- not yelling, not quite, but their voices are firm through the walls, talking about what they're going to do, about what happens next. Dean is in the room that he and his father are sharing. There are no toys here, no other kids to play with. Just Sam in his crib.

He's making cranky noises, wriggling around and Dean walks up to the edge, looking in through the bars. He's seen his mom pick him up when he's like this, shuffle him in her arms, but Dean's too small to reach over. Instead, he slips a hand through the slates and touches Sammy's small hand.

Dean smiles a little when his brother turns his too-big head to stare at him, eyes wide.

Later, the conversations become louder. As time passes and the snow settles in, Dean's father spends most of his time alone. He drinks a lot and sits hunched over the desk in the corner, writing in a book that Dean can't see. Kate takes Dean out sometimes, holds his hand while they walk down the icy streets, but to be honest, Dean doesn't like being away from Sam, and Kate doesn't really know how to deal with kids. 

Dean knows that his mother is gone.

He's old enough to understand death, to know what it is. He knows that she's gone forever, but he can't understand it. He remembers the revelation of Sam, of holding his little brother and realizing what it meant to have one, but even though the moment has come and gone, even though his mother is dead, he's not sure what that means yet. So far, all it means is conversations that Dean isn't meant to understand and too many long periods of silence in between.

No one seems to notice him. 

But Sammy notices him.

He and Castiel and the heron woman stay in the room with Sam's crib, and Dean figures out which cry means food and which one means diapers and which one means _I'm tired._ He can't reach into the crib, can't make a bottle or change the baby, though he wishes he could, but he listens anyway. He listens to Sam and learns the sound of his voice.

The heron woman stays, lurks by the crib, and Castiel doesn't chase her away anymore. The two of them are there, always there, and when Dean goes to bed at night its Castiel that tucks him in. Once, he thinks he feels the heron woman kiss his forehead as he drifts off to sleep, but he's not sure if that's real or only a dream of his mother.

It's one day in the middle of December that Dean's father isn't there and Sammy starts to cry. There's a thunderstorm outside, loud and booming, rumbling through the house and it wakes Sam up, the unrelenting cracks of thunder frightening him.

Dean thinks Kate is home but he doesn't want to go and get her, doesn't want to leave Sam alone -- he won't leave Sam, not after the fire. Not after the way his mother vanished and never came back.

"Shhh, it's okay Sam," he murmurs, Sam the only person he talks to anymore. He reaches through the crib to grab Sam's hand, just like he always does, but Sam pulls away, fussing as he kicks his legs. Dean's brow furrows and he reaches again. "It's okay, Sammy... It's okay."

But there's another clap of thunder and Dean jumps, scaring Sam and making him scream all the louder, little body twisting. Dean feels guilt rush in, hot and sudden.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he says, desperate, trying to grasp his brother's hand. This time Sam yanks it away, eyes tight shut and gummy mouth open. "I'm _sorry--"_

But Dean's breath hitches. He's tired and he misses his mother and he doesn't know what to do. Or he knows what to do for Sam. He just doesn't know how to do it.

"I'm sorry, Sammy-- I'm too short." He steps back from the crib, lifting a hand to rub at his eyes, knowing that Sam doesn't need him to be crying right now. Their dad isn't here and Sam is scared. Dean is all he has. Dean has to take care of him. And Dean is failing him. 

He hiccups.

"I'm sorry..."

He's rubbing his eyes, chest feeling tight and the world aching. When he hears the crib lower, he's certain that Kate came, that someone who's _capable_ is handling it now, where Dean could not. The thought only makes Dean's throat ache even more, overwhelmed with the unfairness of it, wanting to have been the one to save Sam. He's Sam's big brother. It's his job. It's his job and he couldn't do it and someone else had to come for Sam. 

Dean's lips stretch down, breath coming in little jerks, knuckles pressed into the corners of his eyes, but then the squall of Sam's screams comes closer, comes over to him, and he looks up slowly, shoulders jumping with little hiccups. When he manages to open his eyes, he sees through blurry vision the black-eyed woman, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders and her huge swallow’s wings like shadows behind her. 

She's holding Sammy in her arms.

"...He needs you," she murmurs softly, lowering herself down to her knees in front of Dean. She looks down at the baby in her arms, and then, with faith in her pitch eyes, she gently hands him over to Dean.

Sammy is heavy as always, Dean's arms too small, but he'd never drop him. He puts everything he has into holding his brother, tugging him close, Sam's body spanning the width of Dean's little chest, head leaned into Dean's elbow.

_Hold his head up, honey._

Dean swallows hard and shuffles Sam inexpertly, trying to mimic the motions of his mother, certain that he'll fail, that he'll never be as good. He's held Sam a thousand times before but never feeling like everything rode on it. Sam needs him now. Sam doesn't have a mother like Dean did and Dean moves the best he can, pushing down the tight feeling in his throat, looking down at his brother as he sniffles. 

"I've got you," Dean murmurs, quiet as he can. The lightning flashes outside, but Sam is just looking up at him, still whining but not as loud. "I've got you. I'll take care of you."

Dean makes the promises as easily as breathing. He knows they're true, believes in them without doubt. He'll never leave Sam behind. He'll always be there for his brother, no matter what. It is the truth of the world.

"I'll always take care of you," he almost whispers the words, but he knows that Sam hears him. He bounces on the balls of his feet, watching as Sam finally begins to quiet. The infant blinks big eyes up at him, glassy and wet, and Dean wants to reach up, to clean off his chubby cheeks from the mess he's made, but Dean's too small. If he moves one hand he might drop Sam and he'd never risk it.

His grip tightens, pulling Sam in as he winces when another bolt of lightning hits close by. Sam draws in a deep breath, and for a second, Dean thinks he's about to wail, but then shadow descends over them. Dean looks up and sees the heron woman, sees her wings over him as her arms move around them both. A second later, there's a soft thump behind Dean and Castiel's there too, two pairs of wings sheltering Dean and Sam.

"...I'll never leave you," Dean promises.

Outside the storm rages on, rain falling and the thunder crashing, but Dean holds his brother, ensconced in the cradle of feathers, certain only of that much.

Nothing in the world will ever tear him and his brother apart.

\-----

Two days before Christmas, their father loads them into the car in the middle of the night. It's cold and Dean's barely awake, Sammy thrust into his arms after their dad buckles him in.

"Daddy," Dean asks, disoriented. "What's going on...?"

Their father looks down at him, leaning on the open door. Around him the snow is falling from the darkened sky, illuminated by the streetlights and little else, drifting silent. Their father is serious and set, his jaw scruffy and unshaven but firm.

"We've got work to do," he says and slams the door shut.


	2. The Strangeness of Sam

The soft cry of the wind is an ever present sound in Sam's world. 

The first thing he is ever aware of is his brother, but the second is the haunting sound of tears that has dogged his shadow and how alone he feels. He doesn't know the word, because he doesn't know any words, but he cries, too. Cries when he's full, when he's well rested, cries when he's clean and cuddled and when everything is perfect.

He cries because some part of his soul is missing, kept forcefully away, and he can hear her calling for him. He can't crawl, can't even gather his thoughts in his yet unsealed tender skull. But he _wants_ desperately, and the only thing that anchors him are the chubby arms of the only person who understands him.

He doesn't know the boy, but he knows the boy knows him. Sam remembers green eyes that he's never seen before and careful hands he's never felt. The boy is the only comfort against the pain of separation and the endless gulf of loss. The beat of distant wings calls to him and he has no idea how to find what he's lost, doesn't even know how he lost it. The universe turns around his tiny head, huge and endlessly complex, incomprehensible to him. 

Somewhere beyond the walls of his crib is something else, something more. He is too young to understand it but he knows it all the same.

Even when he is grown, the wind never stops whispering its promises to him.

\-----

Sam's world is full of secrets.

Built out of them, it seems, some days.

The darkness dogs his steps, the black of ignorance, unbanished by light or explanation. A gaping void of knowledge, of certainty. His own perpetual Dark Ages.

As he grows up he learns that it doesn't seem to bother other people. They don't seem to _mind_ the mystery -- some even love it. Glorify it. The power and the draw of the unknown, the unanswered. Sam doesn't understand that.

The world is full of elements synthesized in the hearts of supernovas; Sam has never been able to understand why others don't want to know _how. Why._ Helium and hydrogen are more than enough for most people, it seems, but Sam is full of isotopes and heavy with neutrons. The world is one giant fission reaction waiting to happen and Sam needs to be part of that.

When he was a child he learned that his questions were rarely answered and even more rarely answered truthfully. What happened to their mother, why they lived on the road, why they had to leave, what their father did.

Why a great black demon lived on his shoulder, watching over him.

Sometimes the secrets seem so overwhelming that he doesn't even know where to begin -- an endless ball of tangled yarn, no beginning and no end, an infinite loop. His family always thought he'd just give in and accept it, the truth of the world, but his family had never really understood him.

They leave Ohio in March with no explanation -- Sam is seventeen years old and right in the middle of the spring semester of his senior year. When they pack up, he's forced to leave all his work behind, only a couple of months before graduation.

It doesn't matter to their dad that Sam was in the middle of his thesis paper for his AP English class, or that he was working on a group project in Physics. It doesn't matter that Sam was getting straight A's across the board or that he might have had the chance to be valedictorian. It doesn't even matter that he'd been about to graduate, all his hard work packaged up and ready to go and now he'll have to start all over. He's going to be dumped into a new school in the middle of the semester, at the end of the year, with no time to really get to know the teachers, to prove to them that he'll work hard to get caught up.

His dad never cares about those things, but he's been worse the past six months, more dogged than usual, like he's got something in his teeth now. Sam's tried asking, but it's the same as when he asks about his mother -- a terse order to stop asking and let it be. Whatever's got his dad so preoccupied, Sam isn't privy to it and isn't ever likely to be.

And in the meantime, he has his own problems to deal with.

Sam'll be the weird new kid to all the other students but that's nothing strange to him. That he can live with. The drop in his grades, though, is something else. He's earned himself a provisional ride to Stanford, something so damned good and so damned precarious. Sam hasn't even brought it up with Dad and Dean yet, but even without that knowledge, yanking him out two months before graduation is bad enough.

"It's just not fair," he says as they unload, bringing in all their things to the crappy little house they're renting. There's rust on all the pipes, some of which poke through the walls, and there's mold in the carpets. It's far from the worst place they've set up shop in, but it's still not like it's somewhere that Sam can get excited about. At least their place in Ohio had enough bedrooms for him to have his own, instead of getting crammed in with Dean.

"Sam," Dean replies, exasperated, like _Sam's_ the one being ridiculous for not wanting to be shuttled around the whole country every few weeks.

"It isn't!" Sam dumps a box of talismans and herbs on the floor, hearing the glasses clink together as he stands up straight. "It's whatever he wants, whenever he wants. When he says jump we don't even get to say 'how high' -- we just have to obey."

"He's the dad, Sam. It's his place to make the decisions."

"And you don't care at all?"

"I don't think this is a democracy. Besides, if Dad says it's the right call, that's enough for me. I don't know why you have to make everything so difficult-- Thanks," Dean tacks on to Cas, the angel carrying in a bag and dutifully setting it down beside the water-stained couch.

He's in his human form -- or humanoid, at least. Two legs, two arms and a trenchcoat. His broad white wings are brought in close to his back, but even tucked as they are, folded up neatly, they look huge, not just long but wide as well. Ruby has a delicacy to her, but Cas is like a brick wall of feathers.

The angel has always been there, as far as Sam knows. From his earliest memory the great white bird has been part of their family, part of Dean, just like Ruby is part of Sam. He's more somber, less likely to talk and more given to lingering in the background, but there nonetheless.

Sam still remembers when he'd wandered away from Dean at the playground when he was four and Cas had swept in to pull him from the path of the car, or when Cas'd taken Sam's hand to walk him to the bathroom when he and Dean had snuck into the water park. The angel is quiet and reserved but he's been more of a parent to them than John, at least in Sam's mind.

Sam's fairly certain that Dean would pop like a turkey timer if Sam ever said such a thing aloud.

Right now the angel is frowning at the offending furniture, always having been a bit of a neat freak. Even if he's not going to say anything, he at least recognizes that this is crap and Sam takes that for what it's worth before retorting.

 _"I'm_ not the one making things difficult-- Dean!" He throws his arms out to either side, frustrated. "I don't know why _I_ get blamed for reacting to _his_ decisions! He's the one that moves us around everywhere. He's the one that never tells us what's going on. I dare to just ask for an explanation and you guys act like I'm the one causing the problems!"

"Well." Dean puts his hands on his hips, twenty two and long since having adopted an air of superiority -- like he's the adult and Sam is just a whiny little kid. Once, Dean used to be Sam's partner, his companion in everything, the four of them a team. But Sam lost out to their dad years ago. "You kind of _are_ the one causing the problems."

Sam's just about ready to explode on that, not caring if he throws a childish tantrum or not, when their Dad comes in after them, his broad body shuffling down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. Ruby flutters off of the breakfast table and up on to the fridge. She ruffles her frill and begins to preen, as put-out as Sam.

"Boys?" their dad asks, glancing around through the archway from the kitchen into the living area. "Everything good?"

"Yes, sir," Dean says at the same time that Sam sullenly says: "No."

John raises an eyebrow at Sam and in any other family, Sam thinks, the dad would ask what was wrong. He'd want to know if things were okay, if Sam would be alright here. He would care that he was leaving his children in some squat that should have been condemned years ago. He would at least ask what the problem was. He would wonder if his youngest was okay.

It still aches that their dad doesn't care, doesn't seem to want to know if Sam's alright, but it's been years, and Sam's moved the hurt all into anger. It's easier to deal with. 

"Sam," he says, tone couched and wary. "You know the drill."

"I do," Sam replies. "I _do_ know the drill. I just don't get _why_ we have to go through it. Half the hunts you take don't even have anything to _do_ with mom. I--How long are we gonna stay here? Is it even worth it for me to try and get my transcripts transferred? Is it even worth it to try and settle in? Or are we gonna be moving again in a month?"

"We'll move when we have to, Sam. We go where we're needed."

I _need you,_ Sam wants to say, but it's too bare, too honest, and he's afraid to put it in front of John. He's afraid he'll let it out in the open and instead of all the things Sam hopes for, all the things he wants, he'll just get the same exasperated stare. So instead he says:

"We're not the only hunters in the world. There's Caleb and Pastor Jim -- and they know other hunters! Please, Dad--"

"This is _important,_ Sam," their dad cuts him off. His tone is colder than normal, has been ever since the possession in Des Moines months ago, like he has even less patience for their arguments than normal.

"It's _always_ important," Sam snaps back, hating the way a ball of emotion builds in the back of his throat. "Getting revenge has always been more important to you than _any_ thing else and--"

"This isn't about your mother!" John's voice rings loud in the small house, the weak walls practically shaking with it and Sam almost takes half a step back from the force. Both he and Dean stand there, frozen, and Sam stares at his father. The older man is tense, the cut of his form in the doorway almost vibrating until he lets out a long breath, lifting a hand to run through his hair as he does so. "...This is important, Sam. It's--... This is something I have to check out. Once I know--... Look, I'll make it up to you, okay? After this. Once this checks out."

There's a waver to his voice, like he's hoping for something. Something big. It's unusual for him to even say something like that -- to suppose that something will check out. To call a case before he even sees it. And if it weren't his dad, if it weren't John Winchester, Sam would have thought he'd heard hope in the man's tone.

Sam's not sure what to say to that, not sure what he _should_ say to that. There's a part of him that still wants to know, that hates to be left here questioning in the dark. It makes him feel insecure. Adrift. He'd even help if he could but most days he feels so far away from his father that they might as well be on opposite sides of the ocean.

All he says, though, is:

"...Yeah. Okay." Because there's nothing else to be said. Whatever this big, important thing is, Sam isn't big and important enough to know about it and no matter what he says that isn't going to change. 

Their dad lingers in the doorway another moment before nodding, accepting this.

"Good. You two get settled in... I have to make some calls. I'll be heading out tomorrow morning. I expect to be gone a couple of weeks." He pauses again, waiting for a response -- as if he'd actually listen to it -- before turning around to head back out to the car.

Sam lets out a frustrated breath only to stumble forward when Dean whaps him on the back of the head.

"Hey!" Sam objects, hand going immediately to the base of his skull, rubbing even though it doesn't really hurt. 

"You always gotta make things difficult?" Dean asks, frowning.

"It was the middle of the semester, Dean!" he retorts hotly.

"So?"

"So? Do you really only think the things _you_ care about matter?"

"I could ask the same of you!"

 _"I_ spend evenings cleaning the weapons. _I_ help with research and translation. And let's not forget, _I_ move across the country with you guys every couple of months. Don't act like I don't contribute!"

"Yeah, well," Dean replies with distasteful snark, "it's hard to remember that when you're being a giant bitch about everything."

Sam's head yanks back, barely disguised pain on his face, expression screwing up as his thin hands curl into fists. It's not fair. It's not fair that their dad gets to do whatever he wants, leave them to deal with the mess, that he gets to always put his revenge first and let his kids struggle by -- and he still gets Dean. Dean was _Sam's._ He was the only thing that Sam had ever really asked for.

The only thing Sam's ever really wanted.

He hears Ruby call out, hears her wings shuffling as she descends from the fridge. A second later Sam feels her long arms wind around his shoulders, pressing her cheek to the side of his head. She always knows when Sam needs her.

"...You're a jerk, Dean," Sam manages to get out, brow set and body tight as he turns away.

"Aw, Sam--"

But Sam doesn't give him a chance to respond. He just picks up his bags and drags them back to the room they'll be sharing for the next who knows how many weeks before they move on again.

It's not home. It never is.

Sam wishes he could pinpoint the time when things changed between him and Dean, when they suddenly stopped being best friends and instead became antagonists, always bickering about something. He wishes he could figure out what happened, what he did to change things, so that he could solve for it. So he could isolate it and fix whatever it is that went wrong. Once, they used to tap out morse code into each other's palms in the middle of the night. Once, they used to share every secret, every dream.

Now Sam has an acceptance letter to Stanford in his bags and Dean doesn't even know he applied, and Sam has no memory of how they got here.

He wants his brother back. He just doesn't know how he lost him in the first place.

Just one more secret. One more thing he can't figure out.

\-----

Sam spends the afternoon squirreled away in the room. He doesn't know whether to be thankful or sad that no one interrupts him. He can hear Dean and their father moving around in the rest of the one-level house, can hear the clink of cans and the ding of the microwave, knowing Dean is working his gas station magic to make them some kind of dinner.

In the meantime, Sam tries to get some work done.

It's not like he knows what topics they're going to be in the middle of at school, but he can at least try; it settles his nerves some to prepare. Studying always relaxes him. Ruby hovers over him, never much interested in his studies but always interested in him and he's grateful for that. She's not always nice, can be flippant all too often and irreverent even more, but Sam has always known that she has his back. She's his demon, his black bird, and he loves her -- doesn't know how not to.

She perches on his shoulders, a little cloying, but it's nice all the same.

He used to ask Dean questions about her and Cas, used to ask Dean questions about everything, but the answers he received were always the same: don't ask, don't talk about it, it's nothing. The answer to most of Sam's questions, to be honest. 

He'd asked plenty of times, back when he was a kid. About their mother. About what Dad did. About their life.

It wasn't like he'd been a stupid kid. He'd noticed the injuries, woken up in the middle of the night to grunts and gruff voices, peering through the crack in the door to watch Dean sewing up their father's shoulder or patching butterfly strips to his nose. Dean would make up stories, like Sam was going to believe that their dad was a superhero or a secret government agent, like he was stupid and not just seven. 

The world had rules. It had values and variables and set constraints. As Sam grew up he'd learned that the world was a wonderful machine of interworking parts, physics holding the stars together, and no one seemed to get how beautiful that was. Knowing, Sam long ago decided, is always better than not knowing. It's just a matter of isolating the variables. Solving the equation.

And Sam is good at that.

In the end it took him two years to figure out what his Dad did, two years to learn that there was more to the world than houses and jobs and cartoons. He'd searched and researched and taken notes. He'd noticed the way his father wrote in his journal and Sam had known that that was what he has to get his hands on. He'd needed to understand.

It's not like he hadn't tried just asking. He'd asked both of them, asked his dad and asked Dean, both together and separate, but he'd always received the same vague answers, the same unspoken words. They thought that somehow he'd be happier in the dark, happier with not knowing. He feels like they don't know him at all.

They'd never understood that the secrets scared Sam more than any truth.

It had taken him a while. He'd had to wait for the opportunity, but he'd gotten the journal and read it. Dean had been upset, his father had been stone-faced, but Sam had known just a little bit more. It hadn't changed much -- hadn't answered the riddles of Ruby and Cas, hadn't gotten his father to open up. It hadn't made his world any less opaque, things hidden and tucked away, but at least it was something. 

One more variable solved.

The secrets, though, had continued. Sam wonders sometimes if there will ever be an end to them.

The last few months in particular have been bad. It's not like it was _great_ before but there's at least been some stability. They'd still linger in a town for a bit after a hunt, especially around November, sometimes for almost half a year if they were lucky. John would be in and out with hunts, busy and marking down things in his journal that Sam wasn't privy to, but he'd at least look up when Sam asked him questions, would reach out and ruffle his hair from time to time. It wasn't awesome, wasn't anything like the homes of the other kids that Sam met in school, but it was something.

Their own, fucked up, Winchester version of happy.

But the last six months have been different. Sam doesn't know if his father's picked up the trail of the thing that killed their mom or what, but he's been even more fanatical. He spends most of his time gone and when he is around it's hard to get more than a grunt out of him for a reply. Sometimes it seems like he barely even looks at Sam anymore, and when he does its with an emptiness that makes Sam think he's not even really paying attention anyway.

Sam's not asking for dad of the year. He just wishes the man would talk to him.

"Sam?" Dean's voice breaks him from his reverie sometime around sunset and Sam looks up, glancing over to see his brother's head poking in through the door. Sam doesn't say anything, doesn't want to start another fight, but he's steeling himself and he knows that Dean can tell. Dean just tries for half a smile and says: "Dinner."

Sam pauses and nods, watching as his brother disappears and he lets out a breath.

"You know he loves you," Ruby reminds.

"I know," Sam says, but the truth is, he doesn't. Some days it feels like he's the odd element, the atom that doesn't fit into the molecule that is Dean and John. Some days he can't help but wonder if they'd be happier without him, but the thought sits like curdled milk in his belly. 

He doesn't want to be apart from his family. He just wants to have his family and be happy at the same time.

More and more, as time goes on, that seems like an impossibility.

He gets up and washes his hands, making a face as the faucet spits murky brown water at first before running clear, then makes his way through the hallway to the kitchen. There's a messy bowl of Hamburger Helper in the middle of the table, Dean's presentation consistently leaving something to be desired, but the taste is always good. His brother would deny it to his dying day, but he was actually a pretty good cook.

They eat together, chairs squished around the table. Dean and their dad talk for most of the meal, making arrangements and talking plans. 

“We know where we're headed when you get back?” Dean asks, piling up the pasta and ground hamburger on his plate, cheese stringing between spoonfuls.

“I'll let you know when I'm back,” John replies, the two of them discussing life like it was a mission. Life like it was a war.

“Where you headed?” It's a normal question. Dean's always in charge when Dad is gone, always knows all the numbers to call if something goes wrong, has the details if another hunter has to be called in. If Sam asked, it'd be a debacle, but with Dean it's routine.

Which is why their dad's response is unexpected.

“That's need to know,” he says, not looking up as he takes his own spoonful of food. It's less than normal, barely takes up a quarter of his plate, and Sam's eyes flick up.

“Sir?” Dean asks, brow furrowed.

“I'll be back in two weeks, Dean. This is--... It's just something I need to take care of. Once I've-- I won't be long. Just gotta go see a contact.” There's a pause, then their dad looks up and huffs a laugh, smile taut. “You know how hunters can be.”

“...Yeah,” Dean replies after a moment, still looking confused but accepting the answer. Sam glances between them and takes a slow bite of his food.

“It's fine, Dean.” Their dad brushes it off. “It'll be fine. Once I get back from this, we can even settle in for a bit. Somewhere nicer than this.” He goes for a smile, strangely strained but not disingenuous. It sits awkwardly on his rough face, but Sam finds himself flashing back to moments in his childhood, birthdays and Christmases caught between hunts, moments when his father would smile down at him and mean it. Before the hunt became everything.

The rest of the meal is normal, a quick back and forth of orders, Dean talking about seeing a help wanted sign on the way into town and their dad nodding along. When they're finished, Sam gets up to do the dishes, but his dad cuts in.

"I can take these, Sammy," he says, and Sam knows it's a peace offering -- one that he won't turn down and he's sure Dad knows that. 

Sam knows he shouldn't let himself be won over with dishes. That just because his dad is doing this one nice thing doesn't mean that he should be let off the hook for everything else. For all the moving around, for leaving them alone all the time, for never being there when Sam needs him. It feels cheap to be bought for dishes.

But he can't help it.

It's his dad. It's his dad trying.

Sam can't turn away from that.

"...Thanks," he murmurs, passing the plates into his father's broad palms, wishing the smile on his face wasn't as real as it was.

He ends up on that water-stained couch in the living room, sprawled out across its length -- it smells a little like mildew and there's a broken spring in the back, but it's what they have and there's no use to be had in complaining now. They are where they are and Sam wants to believe his dad, wants to hope that things really would change soon. Things couldn't always be this way. 

The TV is on, rabbit ears bent and uneven and the picture staticky, but Sam's worked with worse.

"That can't be comfy," Dean remarks as he passes by, looking down at Sam, who's lying mashed up against Ruby's waist, his head pressed to her side and his spine bent at an odd angle. She's sitting up, petting him, one of her wings wrapped around him. He has a handful of her pinyons grasped in his palm, rubbing the edges against his lips just like he used to when he was little, his own personal security blanket in a childhood populated with very little security. The motion always used to comfort him. Habit.

He shrugs his shoulders. It feels fine to him.

"Kids," Dean says, rolling his eyes like he's _so_ much more mature.

"You're only four years older," Sam retorts, but Dean's already leaving the room and Sam settles back down against his demon's side. "Whatever..."

"Things'll be better tomorrow," she says.

"...do you think he was telling the truth?" Sam asks softly, thinking back to their dad's promise -- the promise that things would change soon, and Sam wants the truth, but also wants only one answer. Ruby's never told him the whole truth, but she's never lied to him either. He trusts her. He believes her.

"I don't know," she admits and he can't fault her for the way his heart sinks. He wants to believe that this time will be different, that this promise won't be like all the promises made and broken before. It won't be like all the other times that their father promised it was almost over, that it was just a little more, a little further. That it'll be over soon.

He wants to think that this is different.

He stares blankly at the television screen, watching the pictures flickering across it. The sound is turned down low, fuzzy enough that he can't make out the words, dragging the tips of his demon's feathers across his lips, feeling the familiar sensation of their silky texture, his mind elsewhere.

It takes him a moment to notice his dad standing in the doorway from the kitchen.

When Sam sees the figure his father, he glances down the length of his own body to where the man stands, staring at him. There's a strange expression on his face, one that Sam can't fully parse. His father's brow is furrowed, something unreadable in his eyes, something...sharp. Sam blinks, confused, glancing around him to try and figure out what it is that his dad is looking at, figure out what he's seeing that's making him look almost suspicious.

It takes a second for Sam to realize that it's not what his dad is seeing, it's what he's _not._

To John's gaze, Ruby isn't there. He's never seen Ruby or Cas, never heard them, and Dean had always forbidden Sam from mentioning them to their dad. It's always made things hard, always made things more awkward between them than they had to be, but Sam gets it. Their dad would never understand. He barely understands Sam now, as it is.

It takes Sam a moment to try and edit Ruby out of the picture, to see what it is his father sees: Sam, mooshed up against thin air, twisted into an uncomfortable position with his weight leaned against nothing at all, mouthing at something that doesn't exist.

He's not doing something physically impossible -- something like riding on Ruby's shoulders -- but he must still look _strange,_ and Sam doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to lie this away.

He opens his mouth, but in that instant his dad is turning away, walking back into the kitchen and out of Sam's sight without another word.

His dad is gone the next morning before Sam or Dean have risen.

\-----

Sam wakes up in a unfamiliar room, under an unfamiliar ceiling, and that's par for the course. He wakes up without an alarm, always an early riser, and sets about getting washed and dressed. Ruby is a pile of black feathers over Dean's back and Sam's brother is still snoring quietly to himself.

“What would you like for breakfast?” Cas asks, and that's as much an indication that their father is gone as the absence of the Impala in the gravel driveway.

The only good thing about Dad being gone all the time is that it allows Cas and Ruby to actually do so. They can move around, do what they want, cook or clean and help out.

And Cas makes a pretty good omelette.

“Omelettes?” Sam asks hopefully, his voice low. There's no reason to wake Dean or Ruby yet. He's never seen the angel sleep before but he's sure it happens at some point.

When Sam's finished washing his face and brushing his teeth he moves through into the kitchen, pulling a t-shirt over his head. Castiel is heating up the stovetop -- it's old, just like everything else here, but Cas doesn't complain. He searches around for a frying pan while Sam settles himself at the table, skinny legs kicked out.

The morning is slow and soft, almost peaceful, and when John is gone this time of day is kind of Sam and Cas's time. No hunts, no fights, no chores. Just the rising sun and the quiet. Sam likes the angel, likes how he never raises his voice, how he's always nice. Cas has never been a particularly warm person but he's there, which is more than Sam can say for _some_ members of their family, and Sam appreciates that quality. He appreciates the lull of day before it starts.

It breaks soon enough, of course. The smell of the eggs cooking wafts back to the small room that he and Dean are sharing and Dean stumbles through after a few minutes, Ruby perched on his shoulder. When he stretches his arms up in the air she flutters her wings, flying over to Sam's shoulders instead and he lifts his hands to rub the sides of her head, underneath her beak.

Where Castiel and Ruby came from, why they're there, has always been a mystery -- another unanswered question in the chain. Dean had always been adamant that Sam not mention the ephemeral birds to their father, something Sam never quite understood until he was older, until he understood that not _everyone_ had great winged guardians. Their existence is a secret kept between him and Dean, and though Sam had always wanted to know more, he had also loved that it was something that was his and Dean's alone. Something special and theirs.

But whatever their presence means besides that is a mystery. 

Once Sam had figured out that their dad was a hunter, once he knew about the books in Pastor Jim's basement, he'd decided he was going to figure out why they were there, what it meant that Ruby was no angel. He was going to figure out why instead of a guardian angel he had a great demonic bird as his other half.

Since Sam'd been forbidden to ask their dad or anyone else about the two invisible specters, he'd had to research by himself. There hadn't been much to go on. He'd spent nearly a whole damned summer down in Pastor Jim's carefully-kept library, back when he was twelve, and come up with next to nothing.

He wishes that Ruby had been more of a help with it, but she hadn't been at all. She was a demon, but she wasn't like any of the other demons they'd ever encountered. She wasn't a great cloud of smoke, she wasn't possessing anyone. She didn't torment people or create destruction. Her eyes would go flash black when she was upset, yeah, but other than that she didn't seem anything like her brethren.

All he knows, all he really knows, is that she's always been there. He feels her like he can feel his finger tips, is aware of her like he's aware of breathing -- something that is so constant, so inevitable and natural that he doesn't notice it at all, most of the time. So natural that for years Sam didn't know there was anything wrong with her being there at all. She's part of him, his friend and confidante and other half.

He loves her more than anyone else in the world.

Except for Dean.

Sam's memory is blurry but far from imperfect, and he remembers her looking down at him over the edges of his crib, as constant as the stars. 

Sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Cas to finish cooking, Sam cards his fingers through her feathers and feels her rub against his jaw. She's always sweet in the morning, though, when she's sleepy. By afternoon, the devil comes out.

“Coffee,” Dean says with a grunt.

“Don't think this place came with a machine,” Sam replies, scritching at the lining of Ruby's beak. If they rented places they always had to come furnished. It wasn't like they could pack much more than clothes and ammo into the Impala. 

“Nnngfuck,” Dean grumbles, his head still stuck in a shoddily constructed cabinet, like maybe something is hidden in there. Sam snorts and reaches down for his backpack, tucked up against the doorway. He tosses his brother some packs of instant, hearing a mumbled 'thanks' as Dean sets about boiling some water.

When they're both sitting down, forks and knives scraping across plates and steam rising from the strong black in their mugs, the sun is above the horizon and creeping up into the sky. Sam sniffs and glances at the clock, enjoying the laziness but knowing he'll have to get to school early. Getting a transfer sorted was always rough.

“What's the rush, buttercup?” Dean asks, taking a long sip of his coffee. His voice is less gravelly and more steady now. Neither of them were deep sleepers, their dad's training having burned that out of them, but given a chance Dean still likes to sleep in, still likes to let himself come around slow.

“I gotta get to the new school early. Gotta get my transcripts worked out.”

Dean snorts.

“Just take the day off, man. Get settled in,” he says.

“Getting my transcripts worked out _is_ settling in, Dean. The more school I miss the harder it's going to be to get my diploma this year.” Sam thinks of the acceptance letter stuffed into the bottom of his bag. He doesn't think he'll be totally screwed if he has to take a summer semester but he'd rather not take the chance. Besides, he has to use the summer to save up. Or plan. Or figure out how the hell to tell his family.

"Dude, it's just school." Dean shrugs it off like it's nothing and to Dean it _is_ nothing. He dropped out in the tenth grade.

"School is _important,"_ Sam shoots back.

"To who?"

"To _me."_

Dean eyes him once but seems to accept that -- or accept that it's too early for another argument, anyway -- and drops it, setting his mug back down on the ring stained table. Sam finishes up his breakfast and goes to get changed, pausing before tucking the letter from Stanford into his backpack as well. His dad was more likely to snoop than Dean was, but Sam doesn't want to take the chance.

Besides, Dean acts more and more like their dad everyday, it seems.

Sam quells the faint prick of hurt that always accompanies that bitter thought and heads out the door. Dean is in the living room, flicking through the poor selection of channels. Castiel is in the kitchen, cleaning the dishes from breakfast.

“Have a good day at school, Sam,” the angel says genially but without tone -- normal for him. Sam appreciates it, the gesture alone.

“Thanks, Cas,” he replies, pushing open the screen door to jog down the steps. Behind him he hears Ruby swoop out, her slender swallow's wings gliding over something other than air and Sam sets off at a brisk pace.

Their dad has the car, of course, but Sam's used to walking everywhere. The school is just over a mile and a half away, he thinks, if his estimates from driving into town the day before hold. It shouldn't take him more than thirty minutes to get there.

Sam had always liked learning, liked taking tests and seeing them come back perfect, liked the few friends he managed to make after each move. He'd always liked how understandable, how achievable the goals in school were, but it had only really come alive for him when he was eleven -- a few years after he'd found his dad's journal, after he'd asked his father for answers and received nothing in return.

School is nothing like that. Nothing like his family.

At school, in his classes, when he raises his hand with a question he gets a smile and praise, and when he doesn't understand, when he's confused or when he _does_ understand but is just curious, wants to know more, wants to know something outside the parameters of their carefully defined lesson plan, the teacher stops and turns and listens. And then answers.

In school, his curiosity is encouraged, his questions responded to, and his desire to know, to discover, is fostered as something precious, not something frustrating and unnecessary. Sure, he's labeled a geek in almost every school they end up at, but that's nothing new. He's always been pretty small -- short; and skinny to boot -- and that and the long-passed hand-me-down Goodwill clothes are more than enough to leave him ostracized. He doesn't care too much, though. His family always packs up and leaves before he can make any lasting friendships anyway, and it's always painful to leave friends behind. It's better, easier, to bury himself in the books, in all the answers the world has for him.

It's easier to befriend his teachers, who're the same state to state, coast to coast, all adults with a genial care for the kids in their charge, always eager to impart knowledge. They treat Sam like he's something special and Sam can't help but blossom under that, cling to it. He feels like he belongs there.

And it's in complete conflict with his life with his family. And the way they live.

The fact that he managed to get onto Stanford's waiting list had seemed like a small miracle. When he'd been moved up from wait listed to accepted had been unreal. With all the moving back and forth, the disjointed transcripts and the less than reputable schools he'd attended, he'd been more than aware that his application lacked for merit. 

The letter alternately fills him with joy and dread, a chance at a future he still doesn't know how to take, but right now all he can concentrate on is getting his diploma.

He gets to the school a little later than he'd like, kids already filing in through the hallways. It's an older building that's been built onto more than once, so the corridors run in random directions, connected by hard-to-find stairwells, and finding the office is no small trick.

When he gets there he spins the normal lies -- army brat, trucker's kid, whatever springs to mind, and hands over his transcript, tugging on the straps of his backpack while he waits for the secretary to register him.

"Where to first?" Ruby asks when they leave, rubbing her frilled head against his jaw. He's looking at the paper in his hand, his schedule, reading down the room numbers and glancing down the hallways.

"This way, looks like," he says, ignoring the people that blink at him as they pass. "AP Calculus."

"My favorite," the demon says, voice dripping with sarcasm. For all that Sam loves school, Ruby hates it -- she's been trying to get him to play hooky since he was six. Dean has multiple times offered to trade guardians.

"Don't be whiny," Sam chastises, walking them towards the class(at least he hopes), her claws clenching in the fabric of his jacket.

He's grateful that he was put back in the AP course. He'd worked his ass off to get into it in his last school, but here there was always a chance that they'd drop him back. The classroom is nearly at the other end of the building, so of course Sam gets there three minutes late. He's got his note from the office and the explanation that he's joining the class, though, so he's not expecting a problem. The sour lemon look on his teacher's face, however, pretty much demolishes his expectations.

"I know that you're new--" the teacher pauses to glance down at the paper in her hands, then back up at him, "--Sam, but you need to know that I'm not impressed with tardiness."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Parker," he responds. "I got a bit lost -- the school is bigger than what I'm used to. But I was really enjoying my Calculus class back at my last school. I promise I'll be on time from now on."

"Well, Sam," she says as she reviews the papers he hands her. "If you can go and take your seat, we'll continue with the class."

Sam does his best to smile and nod, working his way through the rows of other kids to one of the open desks, slipping into the slot between the desk and the chair. He sets his bag down and tries to get his books out without making too much noise. It takes all of ten seconds for the kid behind him to start poking the back of his neck with a pencil.

His brother and father have always had an inflated sense of Sam's popularity, always thinking him 'the normal one,' the one that fits. It's a lie, of course. Sam's never fit in. Sure, he likes this life, the life of home and school and normalcy. He likes the safety of it, the way the world is ordered, the way that things make sense, but that doesn't exactly make him Mr. Popularity. He's always been the strange kid.

For starters, coming into town in the middle of the year and then mysteriously vanishing a few months later has never done him any favors. But even without the 'new kid' weirdness, Sam's never really fit quite right. He's geeky and skinny with his nose always buried in a book. So for the first two days of a new school he's just your average nerd.

Then someone lands in the nurse's office with a bloody nose or a fractured arm and he's the scary kid.

He's half the size of a lot of his peers in terms of bulk, but after the first couple of days no one dares to pick on him. The butterfly knife he carries doesn't help -- and that's all before the mysterious presence that seems to follow him everywhere, Ruby often felt even if she's not seen.

Sam's never been clear on why people hate having new kids join their class, but they apparently do. He rolls his eyes and opens his notebook, more interested in the class than he is starting drama. Besides, he wants to get into the teacher's good graces after being late.

"Hey," the kid behind him says. "Hey, twerp..."

Sam ignores him.

"If you like math so much, maybe you can do my homework for me this year," he continues. The poking hasn't let up. "C'mon smartass..."

The next second Ruby's wing buffets the idiot's head, not enough to do damage but definitely enough to stun and Sam doesn't need to turn around to see the confused expression on his face. Ruby's never been like Castiel. She doesn't like the idea of restraint and she'll take a human in her talons if she damned well pleases. When Sam was nine, three kids tried to beat the crap out of him after school -- they'd ended up bloodied and bruised, beaten to hell and back for their troubles and with haunted looks in their eyes. Each of them had remembering seeing their friends tossed around by some powerful, invisible force.

"Ruby--" Sam hisses.

"Sam?" the teacher asks from the front of the class, chalk in hand and everyone looking back at him. The teacher looks at him expectantly. "Is there a problem?"

"...No, Ms. Parker. Sorry." He tries for as genial a smile as he can, lifting up his pen. "Just getting settled."

Ms. Parker stares at him for a long moment, her gaze not particularly forgiving, then turns back to the board. Ruby, uncaring of the problems she causes, flies up on to the shelves in the back, settling down to preen and sleep through class. Sam gives her a dirty look before returning to his notes. 

A minute later, however, a note slides into his vision and he glances up.

To his right is a girl with short cropped hair and a broad frame, her t-shirt feminine but showing off the lean cut of her muscles -- Sam makes her for an athlete without even having to guess. She has a pretty smile and is leaning her chin against her other hand. Sam smiles back automatically and glances at the teacher, making sure her back is turned before opening the note.

_'Nice one. Charlie's an asshole.'_

Sam smirks a little to himself, glancing once more at the girl to his right before settling back in to his note-taking. 

He's pretty good at math, he likes numbers and the way they have defined parameters, the way they follow rules and sets, the way they fit so neatly into one another. He's pretty good, sure, but that doesn't give him a license to slack off. He's got good grades, but he transferred in the middle of the semester, and that means certain expectations. Plus, he wants to make a good impression.

Sadly, that seems nearly impossible.

Sam asks three questions during the course of the class and with each one Ms. Parker seems less and less impressed with him. On the third question she informs him that if he can't understand the material then he shouldn't be in this class -- that perhaps he should be back a year, or perhaps in pre-Calc. The emphasis isn't lost on him and he frowns to himself. He's used to being liked by teachers. He's used to not getting along with the students, used to silence from them and solitude, spending his lunch periods outside and alone -- but he's usually able to get along well with the adults.

They're the people that _like_ his questions. They're the people that like that he's curious. He doesn't know quite what to do with a teacher that seems to find it a negative. 

So the next time he doesn't quite understand, he jots the question down in his notes and determines to look it up later by himself.

After class, the bell just rung and the kids flowing out into the hall in a deluge, Sam tries to surreptitiously get Ruby's attention, but the demon is well and truly asleep. Sam decides to leave her there -- she'll catch up with him when she feels like it, she always does -- and walks out into the hall with the lasts of the class.

The girl that passed him a note runs up beside him, her three ringed binder clasped to the side of her chest with one hand. She's about an inch and a half taller than Sam, which is a little embarrassing, but he's also kind of used to it. Dean says he'll hit a growth spurt eventually, but at seventeen, he's not holding out a lot of hope.

"Hey," she says, like he's some kind of person with social skills who knows how to respond to that. 

She, of course, has no idea that it's all an elaborate ruse.

"Hi," he replies, and he's _fairly certain_ that he's doing okay so far.

"My name's Sally." She looks back towards the class room they'd just come from, then back at him. "Sorry about Ms. P. People either love her or hate her. She's not a bad teacher, she just kind of...plays favorites."

"Let me guess -- you're one of the favorites," he responds instantly, before his brain can get the memo to his mouth that maybe that was a little rude.

Thankfully, Sally just laughs.

"Yeah, got it in one. So, you're new? Where are you from?"

"Sussed it out that I'm not one of your people?"

Sally flushes a little red at that and Sam feels immediately bad.

"Sorry," she says, smiling shyly. "I didn't mean it like that--"

"No, no." Sam shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I'm kind of used to playing the defensive. I'm...I'm from all over the place, I guess. Sam, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Sam... Well, I dunno what other classes you have. But... Maybe I'll see you around?"

"Yeah, I'll...see you around," he replies, waving absently in response when she turns down another hallway. He's really glad that Dean doesn't go to school anymore -- because if he did, this would be the moment that Dean snuck up out of no where to tease Sam about being a barely socialized animal who had no idea how to have a conversation.

And then he would tease Sam about talking to a _girl,_ like the chauvinistic idiot Dean is.

Sam makes a face and heads down the hall to find his assigned locker, but the bell ringing again long before he's found it. He still has to go by the library and get his books and figure out where his next class is. He abandons the search with a sigh and pulls out his schedule as he jogs towards the stairs.

It's going to be a long day.

\-----

Tennessee is warm already, early March and the spring giving way too easily to the hint of summer. There's still a breeze at least, whistling swift and sweet through the small town streets of Somerville, doing its best to mitigate the harsh beat of the sun.

It's a bright day, the sky too clear and loud and blue, the chime of the school ringing harshly as crowds of kids swell and run out its doors, tripping and traipsing down steps, the thin rubber soles of their shoes skidding on concrete. Their voices are a cacophony, bright just like the sun and each body jostling against the next, half antagonistic and half companionable, human beings searching for touch.

Sam weaves his way between them, pressed over to the side of the stairs as he dodges his way down to the street, feet skipping over each step, slowing only when he meets the sidewalk. His hands are clasped around the straps of his backpack, weighed down now with some three textbooks and two more paperbacks, as well as two notebooks and an assortment of pens. The graphing calculator that Sam pick-pocketed from a kid in Idaho when he was fifteen is in one of the pockets.

The bag weighs heavily on his shoulders, a more cumbersome journey than the one he took in the morning. He's got more than enough work to do tonight, leafing through the texts and making sure he's more prepared for tomorrow than he was for today.

Above him he hears the expected flutter of wings, the sound shifting to the _tap-tap-tap_ of flats against pavement a moment later. Sam quirks his head to the side, watching as Ruby stretches her arms up high over her head, smirks as she yawns.

The sun reflects green and purple off of her dark hair, like the feathers of a raven, her frame skinny and small but elegant for how compact it is. Her eyes, even when not flooded black, are even darker than her hair, no way to tell the iris from the pupil. 

“Good first day?” she asks with lazy abandon, the question mostly perfunctory.

“Not really the first day when you're joining in the middle of the semester,” he points out.

“Oh Sam.” His demon gives him a sideways look -- a fond smile but quirked brow. 

“What?” Sam scowls. He hates that look. The look people get when they think they know better than him. 

“You really _can_ be a defensive little bitch, you know that?”

Sam screws up his face a little, but he thinks about Sally, about how his words had come out more barbed than he'd intended them. It's not a lie. Not something they're making up about him. He _is_ defensive, seeing malice even in innocence. He just can't help but feel that it's because he constantly has to _defend_ himself.

He lets out a long breath.

“...The day was fine,” he replies to her original question. He turns his gaze back to the pavement, watching one foot jut forward before the other, distance defeated one step at a time. “Busy. Hectic. But not bad.”

“Think you'll like it here?”

“Maybe,” he says as he thinks: _I hope not._

Liking places is worse than hating them. At least when they leave places he hates, it doesn't feel so bad watching them disappear in the rearview mirror.

There's no point in lying to Ruby though, in staying nice for his other half. He feels her fingers card up through his hair from the back of his neck, mussing it up. Sam smiles to himself just a little.

Moments like this, he thinks of being six and Ruby rocking him to sleep, the thunderstorm raging outside and Dean whispering _'It's okay, I'm here.'_ He thinks about the time Dad was in the hospital and Ruby blew bubbles to make him smile.

She's mean sometimes, cavalier and overly self-assured, but she's also sweet in her own way. She may be a demon, but she's his.

“Well,” she says, her tone of voice already sly. “I think I know what you _do_ like. You like that sweet little girl from your math class.”

“Augh, Ruby,” Sam groans, goodwill evaporating. He tries to shove at her hand, but she's persistent and she knows he just looks like a freak wandering around waving his arms at nothing.

“Don't think I didn't notice,” she teases, finally leaving his hair alone. Sam's not sure he wants to know what it looks like.

“Notice _what?_ That I talked to someone? You're aware that males and females are capable of talking to one another without expressing sexual interest, right?”

“Oh god, Dean's right. You really are a giant geek.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

“You're as bad as him, I swear,” he mutters, then speaks up again. “She was just a nice person. I can like nice people without wanting to jump them.” He purses his lips and shrugs a little. “Besides. You already know...”

He lets it drift off there, incapable of talking about it like this, out here. Out in the sun and the daylight and the traffic. Out in the real world where it would be something just as real. 

And it's not like she doesn't know exactly what he's talking about.

Her teasing tapers off, well enough aware that _this_ isn't on the table. That this isn't something she can just joke about. She'll drive Dean crazy some days but she always respects Sam's boundaries.

“...Yeah, honey,” she replies softly. “I know.”

She doesn't say anything else for the rest of the walk home and Sam is grateful for the silence. He's also grateful for the feel of her, for her presence beside him and the way she makes him feel less alone.

When they get in Sam expects the house to be empty, Dean out looking for work, but instead he's sitting on the couch with their weapons collection spread out in front of him, everything in neat order and half of the pistols disassembled.

“Hey,” Sam says, standing in the doorway, one hand still holding on to his backpack.

“Hey,” Dean replies, glancing up from his work, but his rough and grease smudged hands continue to move, rag rubbing over the metal.

“Thought you'd be out.”

“Nah. Turned out to be easier than expected. Got a waitering gig at the TGIF. It sucks but we're only going to be here a couple of weeks anyway.”

“Mm...” Sam shrugs his shoulders, eyes sliding off to the side. There's a lull and Sam takes it as his cue to leave, to go back to their room and spend his evening with nose buried in books. Him in one room and Dean in the other, not at all unusual these days.

So Dean surprises him a little when he says:

“You wanna help me?”

It's not said with expectation. No harsh critique. It's not a dig at him or some insinuation that Sam's not carrying his weight. It's an invitation, quiet and plain and simple. Sam had almost forgotten what that sounded like.

He's got more than enough work to do tonight, but not enough to pass this up.

“Yeah, sure.” He lets his bag fall from his shoulder, into the crook of his elbow, the weight enough to throw him off. Cas moves over from the window and reaches out to take it, setting it on the floor as Sam walks to the table.

Dean hands him a rag and a pipe cleaner without a word, the gun oil in a bottle between them, and Sam settles himself down on the floor opposite his brother. He watches Dean return to his work, his movements a level of skill so deep it seems more like instinct. Sam smiles a little.

He loves the way Dean's hands work.

He remembers the first time they did this, back when Sam was ten and considered old enough to know 'the tools of the trade.' Dean had been fourteen and already going on hunts with their father, leaving Sam alone with Ruby a lot of the time. Sam hadn't really wanted to hunt, even then. He didn't like how dangerous it sounded, didn't like waiting in the motel room for hours, wondering if tonight was the night his brother or his father didn't come home. He didn't want to hunt, but he'd still wanted to be a part of his family, wanted to do what they did. He wanted to be able to help to keep them safe.

He'd asked Dean to show him how to clean the guns and for once he'd asked a question that made Dean smile. It had made Sam feel lit up inside like a firework. Like he'd finally done something right.

Then, just as he did now, he'd lined up their weaponry with expert hands, Castiel perched behind him on the back of the chair. Dean had taken the whole afternoon to show Sam how to take a gun apart, how to clean it and put it back together again. How to do it for a pistol, for a shot gun, even for the one fully automatic that their dad kept but rarely used. Sam hadn't really been interested in the guns themselves, but he'd loved the hours spent pouring over them, loved the attention his brother had given him, the way Dean'd _looked_ at him, instead of conspiring with their dad over papers of research on a werewolf or a local haunting as he'd only just been starting to do. 

"What does this do?" Sam had asked back then, a Glock in his hand and half assembled. In his other hand he'd held a long spring, coiled tight and stiff.

"Dunno," Dean had said with an uninterested shrug. "Goes here though, see?" He'd offered the gun out and Sam had frowned. He'd touched the spring, trying to compress it and finding it barely moved, only curved to the side. He'd taken the rest of the gun and reassembled it, then taken it apart again. Then he'd done it all over again.

Dean had tsked after the fifth disassembly, shaking his head and getting up to go do something else, while Sam had carefully fitted the spring back into the barrel of the gun. Sam remembers cocking the weapon and watching what parts moved, then taking it apart again, pressing his fingers into the mechanisms to see how they'd interact.

He'd ended up having to do research at the local library, pulling huge books down from high shelves, spreading them out over one of the desks. He'd read through pages of small text and even smaller diagrams, fingers tracing the lines across the thin paper to the parts of the machine. He'd learned that the part was called the recoil spring, learned that the part that goes in with it was the recoil spring plug. He'd learned about recoil operation, conservation of momentum, and that had sent him searching for another book on the other end of the library, his afternoon spent reading about Newton's third law of motion. In the months afterward, he'd started to call bullets 'ejecta' and found out the difference between mass and velocity and the relationship between them. He'd learned what each weapon in their arsenal could fire and the optimum weight of the projectile to absorb the recoil.

It hadn't make him a better marksman. Dean's still better, even now, after years of training. Dean still knows what bullet to put in the gun and doesn't care why he has to use that bullet -- just knows which to use, and that's enough.

But nothing is _enough_ for Sam. Sam wants to do more than just know.

Looking back, Sam thinks of that as the last time the two of them really did something together before Dean had vanished. At the time, Sam remembers he'd felt concerned, worried with how many times Dean went on hunts, how often Dean seemed to prefer that to all the things they'd done _before._ But'd always assumed that Dean'd come back. There was no way he couldn't. There was no world where the two of them weren't a matched set.

Nearly eight years later and Sam sits across a coffee table from his brother in silence cleaning guns and thinks, _This is nice. We haven't done this in so long._

When they were small they'd been inseparable. Sam remembers sleeping in Dean's bed until he was about eight and Dean twelve, remembers the secret code words they'd had for everything that no one else knew. Dean was four years older than him and more parental figure than fraternal when Sam was a toddler, but they'd always been thick as thieves.

Sam had always felt safe with Dean. After all, Dean would always take care of him.

Dean was the one who made their food, the one who tucked Sam into bed. He was the one Sam had shown the pictures he drew in school to and the one he brought his report cards to to get signed. Dean was Sam's best and only friend in the world and when Sam had been small and in love with his brother, he'd been certain that they'd never be parted.

In short, Dean was Sam's. He always had been, until he'd become a hunter and forgotten about Sam altogether.

The thought still stings, ever present, and Sam wishes, more than anything in the world, that he could fall out of love with Dean. That he could stop being that five year old that had insisted they'd get married when they grew up. He wishes that Ruby _could_ tease him about girls, as if he could ever see anyone around the impressive figure that Dean cut in his life.

Cut and ran, leaving a Dean shaped hole there, and Sam always running to try and keep up.

“You okay there, kiddo?” Dean asks, running a bristle through the barrel of a revolver.

Sam's head jerks up from his own work on a sawed off, glancing across at his sibling(his _sibling,_ Christ; he has to remind himself, watching the motion of Dean's hands).

“...Yeah, I'm okay,” he says finally, gathering himself.

Dean makes a small sound, a huff of laughter and Sam feels his blood heat up -- not in anger but in embarrassment, some part of him afraid that he's been caught out. That he looked too long. That every weak and desperate need could be read on his face.

But Dean's not looking at him. He's looking down at the revolver, shifting the barrel in his palm, fingers sliding over metal. He lifts it up and sights through it, the barrel pointing at Sam and muzzle discipline making the hair on the back of his neck stand up instinctively, even though it's just a tube of metal.

He's grateful that his shaggy hair covers the tips of his ears, certain that the warmth he feels is visible in a blush. He looks down again, returning to the sawed off. He swallows dryly and wonders when he's going to feel like an adult. Wonders when he's going to stop feeling like a kid in the presence of grown ups.

He thinks about Stanford and the acceptance letter, the damned acceptance letter that keeps dogging his thoughts, and he wonders how they could ever have thought that he could stay. If he stays here, he's going to die. Or he's going to live just long enough to watch the only people in the world that matter to him die. If he stays here, he's never going to grow up, never going to make any kind of impression on the world. He's going to follow Dean like a love sick puppy dog until he forgets that he could ever be anything else.

And yet he's still not sure if he's actually going to leave.

He runs his tongue over his lips and his eyes flick up once more then down again. His fingertips trace the grooves of the metal barrels, the small nicks and scratches left in the surface. He doesn't really have a home, but he has just enough to not want to lose it.

He swallows.

“Hey,” he murmurs. He doesn't look up, but from his peripheral vision he can see Dean's motions stop. 

“Yeah?” his older brother prompts when a few seconds have ticked by and Sam hasn't offered a follow up.

“Do you remember when we went to go see Star Wars?” he asks, and the question almost surprises _him._

“What?” Dean asks.

“When we went to that old drive in, out in Kansas.” It wasn't a state they went to often, for obvious reasons. There'd been a hunt, though, and there was no way that their dad was going to overlook something. It was like a rule. 

They'd ended up camped out in an old trailer on the west end of the state while Dad cleared out an infestation of red caps. And then Dad had vanished -- gone completely off the radar and remained incommunicado for over a week. It had turned out he'd gone on a bender back in Lawrence, spending his time alternating between bars and lying drunkenly over the empty grave that had been laid for their mother.

But at the time Dean and Sam hadn't known that. They'd just been a nine and thirteen year old, holed up in some crap trailer and only two months after Sam had learned the truth about hunting. Cas had looked after them and Ruby had done her best to comfort but Sam couldn't help but think that his father was lying dead in some field.

After four days of waking up from nightmares full of gleeful, blood-drenched little monsters weaving through the grass, Sam had been exhausted and Dean had decided enough was enough. He'd hot-wired a car and shoved Sam in, Castiel looking distinctly displeased, and driven them out to the local drive in.

“You bought me a slushie,” Sam adds with a small smile as he looks up.

“Uh,” Dean says, blinking a couple of times, clearly trying to catch up with where this is coming from. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember Sam. What about it?”

“Just...I dunno.” Sam shrugs, his eyes wandering away again as he thinks of being small(or small _er_ ), tucked in against Dean's side, his gaze locked to the big screen. He remembers sipping away at his slurpie and Dean whispering bad puns and dirty jokes to him whenever something happened on screen. “It was...nice.”

“...Yeah,” Dean says, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. He sounds almost wary. “It was nice, Sam. What're you getting at?”

“Maybe we can--” Sam shrugs again then, the motion reassuring with his jittery nerves, with the excess adrenaline and the need to move. “I was thinking maybe we could do that again sometime. Just...go out and catch a movie. We haven't in a really long time.”

Most of the stuff they saw was crappy reruns on crappy motel room televisions, but Sam remembers all the times when they were younger, when they still spent all of their time together, and they'd sneak into the back of theaters. It had been something they did together. A Sam and Dean thing. Spaghetti westerns, cheesy martial arts flicks, grindhouse and slashers -- they'd catch anything with blood or tits in it. Or both.

Dean loved the surrealism, the complete escape from anything real, the complete explosion of insanity across the screen. Sam loved that Dean loved it.

He remembers that they used to squabble over films, Sam always wanting to see the more mainstream fare, but right now Sam would settle for just getting to spend the afternoon with his brother.

“Yeah, um, I guess,” Dean replies, his brow still furrowed, his expression dubious. 

“I mean...if you don't want to...” Sam lets the sentence drift off, uncertain of where it was going anyway.

“No, I just--...You know. We're busy. Besides, we're tight on cash as it is.”

“...Right,” Sam says, unable to keep the note of disappointment from his voice as he looks back down at the shotgun and all it symbolizes. They have to conserve their time and funds for hunting, just like always.

But Dean must hear the disappointment and take it for something else, for something other than the sting of hurt, because he responds a little more sharply:

“I don't have time to go out and watch movies, Sam.” His voice sounds like he thinks that Sam's picking a fight. Sam hates that he can't seem to talk to Dean without starting one anymore. “I'm gonna be working ten hour days next week. By the time I get home I'll--”

“No, Dean.” Sam holds up a hand. “Really, it's fine. I wasn't--...I just--”

Sam shrugs his shoulders, his default motion whenever he's anxious, and he lays the shotgun back on the table, next to its brethren. It doesn't gleam or anything, but it's clean. It'll fire as intended.

“I didn't mean anything by it, Dean. I swear. I was just...thinking of that one time.”

“...Right, well.” Dean puts the reassembled revolver back down on the table, putting his hands on his knees as he pushes himself up from the couch with a sigh. “I should get started on dinner. Don't want you to starve. You uh... You good to clean up here?”

Sam's eyes trace the figure of Dean's form, move up to look at his face, a little awkward and uncomfortable, like he doesn't know what to do here. Like he doesn't even know how to be around Sam anymore and not be fighting. Sam remembers days when they couldn't stand to not be in the same room, when they breathed the same air and when Dean would always be there to pick him up if he fell.

Sam thinks of the letter in his bag and wonders if Dean would even miss him.

His eyes shutter and turn back to the table.

“Yeah, I'm good,” he replies. 

There's a pause, and then Sam can see Dean nod from the corner of his eye before his brother walks away, into the kitchen. Sam sits there on the floor as he listens to the first clinks and clangs of Dean starting to cook, the hollow thuds of the cabinets being opened and shut.

It's not like Sam wants this. He thinks that Dean thinks he does -- thinks that Sam is just being a brat and stirring up trouble. That Sam _likes_ always being in combat with his family. Sam misses the days when he felt like he fit, but sometimes he wonders if they existed at all. He thinks of his childhood and the first thing he thinks of is Dean. Dean, always there. Dean, showing him out to read, how to write, how to run, how to _be._ When Sam had been small, he would have sworn that nothing could come between him and his brother.

Now Dean loves hunting more than he loves Sam. Just like their dad.

Sam sits in a living room in a run down house in Tennessee and puts away their guns. He feels like a pariah.

\-----

The first week in a new town is rough -- always is.

Sam spends most of his time frantically trying to catch up. The material isn't a problem. That he already knows. It's things like projects and papers, things like finding out what books they're in the middle of in English class, integrating himself into the group project in History, starting on the egg launcher in Physics. It's all the kind of stuff that would be great if he lived in one place, if he had time to get into things, but as it is they just seem like massive wastes of time. 

He gets the concept: getting students involved, giving them hands on time and seeing real world applications of what they're learning, but the fact of the matter is that Sam never gets to see the whole scope of a project. He always comes in after the beginning but before the end, gets to put a bunch of work in for no real payoff. 

In the end, he finds projects a massive waste of time.

If he didn't care so deeply about his grades, he'd just ignore them.

In the meantime, things with his math teacher haven't improved much at all. He'd thought that it was just because he was new, because he'd come in late, but it seemed like that was just a catalyst. When he says he doesn't understand, she tells him that's because he shouldn't be in this class. When he wants to know more, she tells him to stop wasting class time. When he needs her attention, she tells him that she has other students, that he needs to think of _them._

It's a completely foreign experience for him. He keeps trying to make up for whatever it is that's set her against him, but he can't seem to do anything right. School is a sanctuary for him, a temple devoted to learning -- to _understanding._ Sam's used to being _their people._ He's used to being accepted as one of them, but Ms. Parker has little patience for him.

The only thing that makes up for it is that he and Sally have struck up a friendship -- at least as much as Sam ever has friends. She still likes to slip him notes in class, and they often talk afterwards while walking down the hall. She's on the swim team, it turns out. There haven't been any meets yet, since Sam arrived, but he has no doubt she's good. Even if he were to ignore all the awards in the school trophy case, she's shyly admitted that she's had scholarship offers.

Sam knows she's mocked at school -- she's fit as all hell, but 'athletic' isn't the same as 'feminine,' and the kids pick on that. She's won enough for the school that she's mostly left alone, but Sam's gotten plenty of jokes lobbed at _him_ for hanging out with her. Mostly unimaginative jabs at his sexuality, making out like he must like men to want to be with her.

If only they knew.

But Sam's used to ignoring it. Sally's a nice girl. A little quiet and less than likely to stand up for herself, but that just makes Sam protective. She's his friend, and he doesn't have many of those. Or any of those, generally speaking.

She helps him out some with the class. Not so much with the material but more with Ms. Parker. Sally really _is_ one of the teacher's favorites, and a couple of times when Sam's getting the stink eye, Sally has shyly raised one hand to take the attention off of him. It's a nice gesture, but Sam just wishes he knew what the hell he did to get on Ms. Parker's bad side in the first place.

She just doesn't seem to like him. Ruby's offered to beat her up more than once, but Sam declined.

Even ignoring how not-right that would be, Sam doesn't want to win like that. He _deserves_ to be in that class. He's worked hard to get into it and he'll work hard to prove that he belongs.

It just means that he spends most of his evenings pouring over his books.

"Hey, geekboy," Dean calls from the doorway, distracting him. "I dunno if you learned this in your books, but you can't live off of sunlight alone. Come get dinner."

"Just a minute, Dean."

"Dinner's hot _now,_ dude, not later. Don't make me go all housewife and tell you how long I slaved."

Sam lifts his head, sniffing the air. He gives Dean a pointed look.

"It smells like pizza," he says.

"Yeah, but like...frozen pizza. Not delivery."

"Oh, sweetheart, you shouldn't have," Sam responds dryly.

"Look, you want your pizza or do you wanna be a little bitch?" Dean crosses his arms.

Sam sighs. 

"I'll be right there."

He takes a few more minutes to get his notes in order, stuffing them into the book he's working on to save the place before getting up to go seek out his brother. It really _does_ smell good, he admits, and it takes him a moment to realize that he hasn't really eaten anything all day.

Sam waits in the doorway to the living room as Dean pulls out the pizza, watching as Castiel sets the table, Ruby sitting in the living room doing her nails. Without anyone else here things fall into a natural rhythm for them -- the four of them working together like the families Sam always wanted. It's just that two of them are invisible to the rest of the world.

Sam thinks he's read every story on guardian angels in the world, but none of them quite fit what Castiel is. None of them include a guardian angel that can't be more than a couple hundred yards away from their charge. None of them include guys in trenchcoats.

But it's still better than having a guardian demon.

She's not evil, not even close. But she is a demon, or at least demonic in nature. And that has...implications.

It's not something that he and Dean talk about, because Winchesters apparently _never_ talk about the things that matter -- but it's an unavoidable truth. Dean has a guardian angel and Sam has a guardian demon. He and Dean are somehow irrevocably different. The thought scares Sam.

Almost as much as the look his father had given him before leaving on the hunt. The veiled look that gave nothing away, something further away and even more closed off than Sam's used to. A look that he's familiar with, but never focused on _him._

It sits on the edge of all that he fears: the unknown, the darkness, the questions he can't even ask let alone answer. It makes him feel abnormal, like the cancer in the middle of his family, living there unknown, undetected. That Dean never wants to talk about it, always brushes it off, doesn't reassure him. It only makes him worry more.

After dinner, they end up on the couch, Castiel seated over in the corner recliner like some kind of stone statue and Ruby sitting with her legs kicked over Dean's lap. Generally speaking, Sam doesn't like it when other people touch Ruby -- when she's beating people up for him, or when a monster on a hunt grabs her, he doesn't like the sensation of their hands on her skin, like someone's put their hand inside of him and started messing around with his guts. But Dean's the exception, just like always. 

His brother taps a finger against Ruby's calf to some unheard rhythm in his head and it doesn't bother Sam at all.

But the questions, the fear, does, and it's only so long he can keep quiet.

"Where do you think Dad is?" he asks finally, and even as the words pass his lips he knows there's going to be a fight. Dean'll assume he was picking it, that he _wants_ to fight, somehow. But the truth is just that Sam wants the reassurance. The anxiety sits like a hard knot in the center of his chest and all he can think of is the way their dad had looked at Sam like Sam was an invader in his house.

"Off on his hunt," Dean replies, not taking his eyes off of the TV.

"I know _that,"_ Sam says, lips pinching together. He wants the comfort, wants what Dean used to give away so freely -- a smile, an arm around his shoulders, the murmur of _'it's fine, Sammy'_ \-- but Sam doesn't know how to ask for it. He doesn't know how to talk to Dean anymore and drives him insane some days. "I meant... _where?_ Doing what? Hunting what?"

"Sam." Dean's voice is a warning.

"I mean, did he say anything else to you? Because he only said that it was something he had to check out. That it was something important but not about Mom. Doesn't that make you curious?"

"No."

_"Dean."_

_"Sam,"_ Dean replies in a mockingly-similar tone. He finally looks down the couch at Sam, expression tight and no nonsense. "Can we just-- Look, it was a long day at work, okay? I know you don't have to deal with that, that dinner just _magically_ appears in front of you, but for me it was ten hours of busing tables with annoying kids and even more annoying adults. I just want to sit back and watch some TV."

Sam frowns deeply at that, hating when their dad and Dean play it up like Sam never contributes anything, like he didn't do all the laundry, like he doesn't research his ass off in between homework assignments to help John out. But it's the great fiction of their family: John and Dean work hard all the time and Sam's the pampered little kid who reaps all the rewards. Like he should be grateful for moving every few weeks and living in squalor because their dad will always love their mom more than he'll ever love them.

Sam can never seem to defeat that narrative.

"I don't think it _magically_ appears, Dean. I'm not--Christ, can we even have a conversation without it becoming a fight?"

"I dunno, Sam. _Can_ we?"

 _"I'm_ not the one who made this an issue!"

"You're the one who always brings it up, even though you know it's going to become a fight!"

"Maybe I'm just hoping that one day you'll actually _listen_ to me instead of assuming that I'm trying to be a brat!" Sam can never say the right thing in situations like this. He can never seem to find the words to say that it hurts, that it _sucks,_ that having their dad be gone all the time, being in the dark all the time, scares him. Instead Dean always finds a way to rile him up, piss him off, and before long Sam's sticking to the script: he's the kid throwing a temper tantrum and Dean is the put-upon brother who has to deal with it all.

"Well, if the shoe fits," Dean responds, and Sam wishes it didn't sting like it did.

He pushes himself up off of the couch, ready to end the scene, ready to storm back to his room and get away, but Dean's not done yet. They haven't hit all the regular notes yet.

"I don't know why you have to always make things so difficult," he continues. "We're his _sons._ He's trying the best that he can."

"No, he's not!" Sam whirls around, not able to let that one go. It doesn't really matter what he says at this point, he should just go back to their room, but he hates letting things stand. Hates feeling like he's implicitly allowing this to pass by staying silent. "He's our dad! He should be here for us! And if he can't be, I think we at least deserve an answer as to why not. I just want to know, Dean. I just want to _know._ Why is that so bad?"

"Because a loyal son shouldn't have to," Dean snaps back instantly.

Sam knows hurt flashes over his features and he sees Dean regret the words, sees his brother's brow pinch, but he's more scared of being weak, of losing the last bit of respect Dean seems to have for him by showing this vulnerability than he is of the fighting. Sam scowls and shouts back:

"Better a disloyal son than some wind-up soldier with no mind of his own!"

And then they're off to the races.

"The hell does _that_ mean?" Dean asks, pushing Ruby's legs off of his lap, ignoring her indignant squawk as he pushes himself to his feet, glaring down at Sam.

"It means exactly what it sounds like -- do you ever even wonder about _anything?_ Or do you just accept everything he tells you?"

"I don't need to ‘wonder,’ Sam. He's our dad. If it's something we need to know, he'll tell us."

Sam throws his arms up in the air in exasperation, not even knowing what to do with that, how to respond to that, that complete and utter lack of curiosity. He doesn't understand how anyone could live their life so unquestioning, could be so accepting of whatever shallow answers the word gave them.

"That's it? You're seriously happy with being on 'need to know' basis in your own family? Do you even-- Seriously, do you _ever_ think for yourself?"

The tips of Dean's ears turn ruddy at that and Sam knows he's stepped in it now, but he's too mad to take it back.

"Go to your room!" Dean yells.

"You're not Dad!" Sam shoots back with equal ferocity.

“Might as well be for all you listen, Sam! You’re a selfish little shit, you know that? You never think of anyone but yourself!”

The words hurt like barbs, sting in Sam's skin like Dean threw them at him and he might as well have. Behind Dean, Sam can see Cas glance between them, even the normally unaffected angel seeming tense. Sam screws up his face, wants to yell something back, wants to say something as angry and hurtful, wants to tell Dean that he's an asshole, that Dean doesn't care about him, has never cared about him. He wants to call Dean a hundred nasty names. He wants to say that Dean isn't his brother.

But he can't. Because none of its true. He just sometimes wishes it were.

Sam turns on his heels, marching across the hall to their room, grabbing his bookbag up off of the ground. It's all of ten seconds before he's storming down the hallway to the front door.

"Where the hell are you going?!" Dean shouts after him.

"Out!" Sam yells back, slamming the screen door behind him as he jogs down the front steps and onto the pavement. He can hear the flutter of Ruby's wings behind him, her presence as normal and natural as gravity, and as much taken for granted. She lands next to him, the shift of her form always unseen, always liquid quick, and Sam's used to it. 

She's kind enough to not call him on his tears as he marches down the pavement, though he can see her looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. He sniffs and rubs a hand over his cheeks.

Once, Sam's certain, Dean loved him. He _remembers_ it. He remembers being a little kid, remembers learning to walk into Dean's outstretched hands. He remembers his brother teaching him the alphabet, remembers terrible drawings tacked on to the surface of the fridge, remembers the way Dean would bandage all his wounds -- not with the perfunctory swiftness of a hunting partner but the comforting touch of a brother.

Sam doesn't know when Dean turned into Dad and Sam turned into a disappointment, but he thinks if he did know, if he could figure it out, he'd give up anything to get it back.

Sam doesn't know what to do about college. He can't live without Dean but he can't live like this either.

"...I like him better as Dean. I can't stand him when he's Dad," he says finally.

"I know, kiddo," Ruby murmurs and Sam feels the familiar brush of feathers against his cheek.

He's always taken her for granted. Just like gravity.

Just like Dean.

\-----

He doesn't really have a reason when he decides to look up Sally's address, other than the fact that he has nowhere else to be and no one else to talk to.

Ruby's there, obviously, but it's not the same. She's too close, a part of Sam's family, a part of _Sam._ She isn't a friend, isn't a separate person. For Sam, to be alone is to be with Ruby, her presence a part of him.

Right now, he wants someone outside of that. Someone outside of the crazy that is his life.

Sam finds Sally's house without too much difficulty. He's not sure if they're friends enough that coming over unexpected is kosher -- especially when she never gave him her address. He's grateful she doesn't think he's creepy when he shows up out of nowhere in the middle of the evening asking if she wants to go for a walk, even if she does give him a bit of a strange look, haltingly calling back to her parents that she'll be out for a bit.

They end up walking down the street and out onto the rural road leading out of town. Sally admits quietly that it's her favorite place to go. Sam can't quite see why -- he's seen a thousand roads just like it.

Sally is long, shoulders broad and muscled from swimming, body flat and block like, hair cropped short to fit under the swim cap. She's not beautiful, not in the traditional sense, but Sam doesn't see beauty like Dean sees it. Sure, he's seventeen and perfectly aware of what it means to want someone, but this isn't that. The few friends he ever makes are always girls, because they don't mind if he's strange, if he reads too much, if he talks to a woman with black wings who isn't there. Dean always teases him about his 'little girlfriends' and it drives Sam nuts. It makes him blush red, because he hates that people think that of him, like he's some skeezy guy chasing tail.

He's kissed girls before, even had something like a girlfriend once, but he doesn't define his friends by whether or not he wants to sleep with them. He doesn't define them by gender any more than he does by hair color.

When Sam looks at Sally, he sees a tree that's run its roots deep, the wind incapable of dislodging it, and Sam admires her. Finds her beautiful in all the ways that no one else does. She's a swimmer, a girl with five medals and countless more trophies, and as they walk she tells him that when she's in the water, all the people that call her dyke, call her bodybuilder, call her thick and ugly, are drowned out by the water. She's swimming to a scholarship and she's going to get out of this little town, escape this life in a way that Sam can't.

"I don't get it," she says, looking back at him over her shoulder, the tops of the trees in front of her a dark line against the orange sky. "You've been _everywhere._ You're moving in a month. You've seen more than just fifty miles of crappy houses and dirt." Envy is woven into her voice, tight in the chords.

"It's not that simple," Sam replies, unable to tell her the truth, to make her understand. He's not trapped by this one town, but by a million. He's seen the Pacific and the Atlantic and he's seen the shore, the sea stretching beyond the horizon of his vision. But it's not open. They're just the walls of a different cage, keeping him locked in this new country, this land that's too old with ghosts and too fresh with innocence. He's trapped on its roads and he's been too far to know how to get out. The oceans pin him in like the metal walls of the Impala, and he can't tell her how jealous he is that she can swim.

She can swim away.

Across the sunset, Sam sees Ruby's dark form, sunlight splitting around her as she flies, not touching her, and she calls out, sound echoing across the silent wilderness, but Sam is the only one that can hear her.

"I wish I could go. I wish I was the one leaving in a week."

"Don't," Sam warns, the word tasting bitter on his tongue. He's been in this life long enough to know that wishes are dangerous, that casting your desires out into the world is just asking for the old and the arcane to come down and make them real in the worst possible way. Never let them know your name, he remembers. Never let them know what you want. He swallows and tries to soften his tone, because Sally's the only person that doesn't think that he's a freak. "You're going to be okay. You're going to get into Auburn, or Georgia -- you're going to get into any school you want. It's just...It's just going to take time. Not even that long. You're only one year away from graduating."

"But you don't have to _wait."_

"But all you _have_ to do is wait," he stresses, trying so hard to show her that it's such a trivial thing. He'd give anything to know that all he has to do is wait. "Sally... My life--"

"What? _What,_ Sam?" She turns now, holds her long arms out, spreads her fingers, needing to know, and he knows her desperation, but still has the knowledge that she is the lucky one. "What is this big secret you can't tell me? Why is your life so rough? Does your dad hit you or something?"

 _"No!"_ Sam stands up, knowing that what she means has nothing to do with sparring, or practice fights. His dad drives him nuts. His dad is a drunk, obsessed with his vengeance and incapable of recognizing Sam, but he's never hit Sam, never struck him in anger, and as pissed as Sam can get at the man, he can't stand the thought of anyone believing that John would beat him.

Sam loves his Dad, even if they don't understand each other.

"Then what? What's so awful that you can't get away?"

Ruby calls a lonely sound and the trees stir with the beat of her wings, a great bird in full flight, swallow's wings spread wide, the fading sunlight making the edges of her feathers appear to ignite, catch fire and burn, the shimmer like smoke curling after her. Sam swallows.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Well not if you don't _let_ me. How do you know I won't understand unless you tell me? Is this why everyone at school thinks you're some kind of sociopath? ‘Cause it sounds to me like you're just hung up on your own drama." Sally crosses her arms over her flat chest, her mouth set. "Don't you get how rude it is to stand there and tell someone else that your problems are more important than theirs?"

Sam winces, because he never meant it like that. He'd honestly never intended that, but he could see how it fit -- some kid from the outside telling the poor little country girl that her problems were trivial. And it says something that he's managed to get her riled.

It was just that the grass was greener where she was standing, and Sam would trade with her in a heartbeat if he thought she'd take it.

Just for five minutes, he wants to be free of all this doubt.

"I didn't mean it like that--"

"I'm sure you didn't, but you still--"

"I know." Sam's fingers curl, ball themselves into fists and it's not her. He's not mad at her. He's mad at his dad, at his brother. He's mad at Ruby and the world and all its carefully guarded knowledge that it refuses to share. If it's not his family keeping him in the dark, it's someone else, like somehow whatever's wrong inside of him will fix itself if he doesn't have any idea it's there. But he does know it's there. He feels it, all the time. 

Feels the way his dad watches him like Sam isn't quite his son.

He's so frustrated and scared and lost and no one's willing to offer him a hand, one measly hand to find his way out. He just needs a little guidance. He's seventeen, almost eighteen, but sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he just sees a kid. He just needs someone to _help_ him.

His hands tighten, until he can feel his nails digging into the flesh of his palm.

This poor little country girl is offering him a hand, if he'd only give her some answers, and he almost laughs at the sick irony.

"...Have you--" he starts, and he doesn't know exactly where he's going, what he's going to say, except he can feel his secrets, his fears, balling up in his throat, struggling to escape, and for a second, he almost lets them out. Lets some civilian know what he is. 

"Sam!" Dean calls, interrupts as he jogs over the slope of the field towards them, waving a hand. Sam turns, poison sliding over his tongue, and turns into a hard ball of hurt in his stomach when he sees Dean grin, wide and lecherous as he comes to a stop in front of Sam. "Hey man, sorry. Didn't know you were with your girlfriend here."

Sam punches Dean before he knows he's going to do it, before he's even had a chance to think. 

It's not like it's really fair, but Dean is there. Dean isn't their dad, or the road, or the demon that lives in his shadow, or the lurking fear that haunts his dreams, whispering _inhuman._ Whispering _monster._

But Dean's still an asshole, and Sam's panting, knuckles hurting, but he doesn't feel bad. He's looking at the barely-there red mark on Dean's cheekbone, which'll turn into an angrier, deeper color later, and he doesn't feel bad. 

Dean lifts a hand to his face, fingertips ghosting over his cheek, wincing only slightly, his body still wrenched to the side, because Sam put his full weight into the hit. Sam's still small, but he's not weak. 

"...You little _shit,"_ Dean mutters and Sam has the sudden realization that Sally's going to get the totally wrong idea here, because Dean's going to beat the crap out of him, and it's not like Sam doesn't kind of deserve it.

"Dean--" he starts, but that's all he gets out before Dean's on him. The two of them tumble to the ground. Sam's struggling, kicking, because Dean still has six inches and thirty pounds on him, but that doesn't mean that Sam's about to roll over and say die. The instinct to fight has been branded into him.

They're pushing, shoving, too close to punch, to get any really good hits. That's good, because Sam doesn't really want to hurt Dean and he knows that Dean doesn't really want to hurt him, but they're both too mad to hold back. Only the close quarters of their struggle keeps them from inflicting some serious damage. Sam snaps his teeth together, like he's a feral dog, and Dean growls in response, shoving Sam back to get some space. Sam narrowly dodges a hit. Dean's hand impacts the soft loam of the ground with more force than Sam is used to, because this isn't sparring. This isn't pulled punches and Sam knows why he's angry, but he feels a strange shock go through him at the realization that Dean is fighting just as hard. Sam can't hear Sally and maybe she's not saying anything, maybe she's not even here, because Dean is all Sam can see, golden-bodied and powerful. 

Sam looks up, teeth grit and lips pulled back and in a flash the sun shifts just right, spreading over Dean's features. For a second, an instant, a heartbeat, Dean is someone that Sam knows too well, more than a brother, more than family, something older and deeper. Something primordial.

A rival. A beloved adversary. And they've been struggling with each other for centuries. Millennia.

The thought runs through him like a shock, something unwanted and unexpected and Sam doesn't know from where it comes. He doesn't know what's happening, doesn't know what he's seeing, less recalling a memory and more feeling the absence of one that shouldn't have been there to begin with.

Sam gasps, back arching, and Dean reels back, pulls his hand back to hit again, but Ruby's there, hauling Dean back just as Sam feels Castiel's arms go around him, pulling him up even as those great white wings surround him, Ruby's dark feathers holding Dean back too.

"The _hell?"_ Dean is panting, angry and staring at Sam like he went crazy, and Sam has to admit, he did.

He can't say anything, though. He almost wants to apologize for hitting Dean, even if Dean had been an asshole, but he can't speak. Can barely breathe. He can feel the sun sinking, the world moving, the water shifting in aquifers beneath him, and he can feel every drop in the world. He collapses back, the world too big, too great, too _wet,_ and if Castiel weren't there, Sam would have fallen. But the angel is holding him up. A second later he feels everything shift again, his legs swept out from under him, and he's being held up, head lolling over Castiel's arm, the angel's other arm under Sam's knees. Castiel says nothing.

Dean, on the other hand is saying Sam's name, over and over again, and Ruby must have released him, because suddenly he's there, next to Sam, hands on his body, not seeking to hurt this time.

"Sam, Sam, Sammy," he says, but Sam doesn't say anything. He can just feel himself shaking. "Sammy, the hell--...What's happening? Cas? What's happening to him?"

"Sam." Ruby's voice is further away than Dean's, not in distance, but in something else. She's there. Sam knows she always will be, but suddenly he knows that she's never been part of him like Dean is, and Castiel will never be to Dean what Sam is.

What Sam always has been.

Sam opens his eyes, and he sees Dean staring down at him, green eyes bright and worried.

"Sammy..."

Sam reaches up, almost touches Dean, who is _glowing,_ who is something more than what he is, what he appears to be, and Sam reaches for his brother until he sees his own hand -- deathly pale, colorless, but his fingertips are coated in ash. He cries out, covering his face.

"Sammy!"

Castiel's hands clutch him tighter, and Sam is sobbing, feeling his destiny sneaking up on him, waiting to pounce, and he still doesn't know what it is, what _he_ is, but it's something awful. He can feel that much. And he can feel that he came here to run away.

"Dean," he chokes out, and a second later he's being transferred into his brother's arms, the two of them going to their knees, collapsing.

"It's okay," Dean murmurs, as if Sam never punched him, as if they'd never fought, forgiveness so easily given that it's already come and gone, vanished and forgotten before the words could even touch Dean's tongue. "It's okay, I got you." And Sam sobs, afraid of everything in this world, afraid of himself, afraid of everything except his brother.

He knows he tries to apologize at one point, but the words are blubbery and flubbed, lips too wet and too numb to form them perfectly. It doesn't seem to matter, because Dean murmurs into the shell of his ear _it's okay._ Sam doesn't think that's true, but there's some part of him that will always believe in Dean's promises. He shuts his eyes and he clings, the whole world feeling like it's spinning.

The sun has set fully by the time Sam blinks his eyes open, uncertain of how much time has passed, only knowing that his momentary madness seems to have faded -- whether real or imaginary, the unearthly pallor and the ash have vanished. He's him again, the water of the world finally going silent and still, leaving him only human, leaving him safe. For now, at least. 

He swallows dryly, Dean's large hand clasped to the side of Sam's head, awkward and covering Sam's ear so that he can't hear. Ruby and Castiel's wings are around them, a self structured shelter, and Sam isn't sure which one of them is touching him, one or both. He remembers, a brief flare of conscious thought, that Sally was here. That there was someone else here. He blinks blearily, looking around as much as he can, through the mess of black and white feathers, and when he spots her, he feels his chest constrict.

She's watching them in horror, blank and scared, an animal gone stiff and thoughtless in the face of a predator it couldn't predict or understand. And in her eyes, in the glassy gaze of her eyes, Sam can see the moonlight reflecting off of the faint arch of four massive wings.

Not the form, not the reality of them, but the structure. She can see the outline of the terrible creatures that live within and around Dean and Sam.

Sam breathes slow and shallow, and eventually he turns his face to hide it in Dean's shirt.

He has no answers for her. He has no answers for himself.

It's that look of horror that stays with Sam through the walk home, after Sally's run away from them and Dean's led him silently back down the empty country road, the brief contact between them gone now, vanished like Sam's vision of another life.

It's the look of horror and the age old mystery, the constant knowledge that he's different from everyone else and yet he doesn't know why. But this is the first time Sam's _seen_ it like that, though.

When they get through the door Dean tries awkwardly to talk to him, but Sam has no explanation for his fit. He's afraid of telling Dean what he feels. He's afraid that one day his brother won't look at him like family, remembering when Dean used to look at him like the most important thing. He's afraid that one day Dean will look at him like a monster. Will look at him like their father does.

The thought of their father makes him shudder and he locks it away, turns away from it.

Sam manages only to mumble some excuse about going to wash the dirt from his hands and face. He's grateful that Dean doesn't follow him, tucking himself away into their bedroom and leaning back against the door, head tilted up and staring up at the darkened ceiling.

"What am I?" Sam asks, the words soft, almost wondering, but this is so much more than that.

He's asked the question a million times, asked Ruby again and again and even Castiel too. Sam had looked and read and researched until he'd passed out in the middle of a book, but neither he nor Dean had ever found the answer for Ruby or Castiel's presence. They were the unending question of their lives and Sam doesn't believe in coincidences. He knows there's more going on that he doesn't know about, because there always is, and he's not sure how much more of this he can take.

He feels like he's going insane, like this life, like his father and Ruby, like the moving, the secrets, the distance between himself and Dean is going to tear him apart. It's not getting better. It's getting worse.

Ruby is sitting on the dilapidated dresser, hands clutched on the edge, to either side of her legs, and her black wings are arched and stretched, one shielding her from the March moonlight, casting a pale crescent across her feathers.

"Sam?" she replies with a question.

Sam tilts his chin back down, looking across at his demon, and there's a look of innocent curiosity on her features that doesn't suite her face.

"I'm--I mean, I've heard of guardian angels before. And Dean..." Sam's eyes slide to the side. "Dean has an angel. But I have...you." He bites his lower lip, not meaning that to come out cruel, because Ruby is an extension of himself and he loves her. He gathers up his courage and looks back at her. "Why? Why're you here? Why me? It must be-- Am I human?"

Ruby is fiddling with her fingers, twisting one of her many rings back and forth. She looks awkward, searching for words. Ruby has never lied to him, but she's also never told the truth. She hides her secrets in silence, and Sam feels something awful sinking in his stomach. He doesn't like this doubt, this feeling like there's something bad in him, when he tries so hard to be good. Day in and day out he has a demon perched on his shoulder, but he's never had any inclination to go around killing people or be a bully. 

"Ruby?" he pushes when she maintains her quiet, a hot burst of frustration pumping into his veins. It's something that's been on his mind for months now, and he really should have guessed that she wouldn't answer him.

"Sam, you're... You're Sam. Isn't that enough?" she asks, looking hopeful, quirking that smile that's meant to dupe, like he's still some kid she can pull the wool over, brush off with a cute quip and a muss of his hair. Like she could still distract him with bright lights and _here comes the choo choo train._

"Stop it!" he yells, getting up, hands balling into fists at his side. "I'm not a kid anymore! Just tell me! Tell me what I am. Normal people don't get guardian demons. Normal people don't see demons and angels. Normal people don't--Just tell me what it is!"

"I can't, Sam." Her voice is twisted with that _for your own good_ crap, like she really wants to tell him, like it's something else holding her back and not just her own stupid mouth. She could tell him, if she really wanted. She could.

"I _hate_ you!" he yells, too mad to stop the words, and she freezes. It feels good, to have her looking at him and taking him seriously. It feels good to have someone look at him like he's a person of consequence. "If you weren't here, I'd just be a normal person! If you weren't here, I wouldn't even have to ask!" He's shaking a little, and he hates it, because he knows he's going to cry again and he doesn't want to. Doesn't want to relinquish this power of having someone hurt by him. For once, someone looking at him like something other than a kid. "I wish you weren't here."

He purses his lips, tight and determined, vision turning watery and he holds his breath to hold it back. Ruby, though, Ruby looks shattered. She's pushed herself off the dresser, standing there on the dirty carpet, holding both of her hands against her chest and staring at him, lips slightly parted. For a moment, for just a second, it feels good. But Sam's never had any inclination to be cruel, and when Ruby turns to leave, Sam feels breathless with what he's said to her, the way he's pushed away his other half. He rushes to her, throwing his arms around her waist and holding on tight, pressing his face into her shoulder.

Her arms don't come up. She doesn't hold him in return.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," he mumbles desperately, scared that she really will go. Vanish into the horizon and then he'll be alone. He knows he'll be alone, because whether or not Ruby's here, he is whatever he is, and Sam's scared of that. One day, his dad will find out; his dad, who hates everything that isn't human, and his brother who follows their dad everywhere. And then who will there be? Even Castiel sometimes looks at him with fear. An _angel._

The only person he knows will stay with him is Ruby. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it..."

Slowly, her hands touch his back and she holds him, holds him against her, something like Sam had always imagined a mother would be like, even if Ruby is more like his stomach or his lungs than some independent creature, separate and apart from him. Sam is terrified, suddenly, that she _will_ leave. That she could. It's a truth of the world that he and Ruby are a part of each other, just like Dean and Castiel, but Sam's suddenly scared that maybe she can leave. Maybe Ruby just has to decide. Maybe he's always taken for granted that she'll always be here, and she could up and leave whenever she wants, leaving Sam empty and alone, hobbling around half a person and unwanted.

"Please don't leave." His voice is softer now, much softer, fingers twisting in her clothing, but feeling a certain hopelessness -- that he has no say in this, like everything else. Everyone else makes the big decisions.

"I won't, Sam. I won't," she replies, one hand moving to the back of his head. "I can't--...I can't tell you what you are. Why you are the way you are... I _couldn't._ There aren't words."

"Am I..." he starts, swallowing dryly. "Am I...bad?" He glances up at her.

She pulls back a little and he loses his grip on her, afraid she's leaving, until her slender hands come to his wet cheeks, wiping away his tears, and she's crying too, neat and even streaks down her cheeks, nothing like the blotchy mess smeared over Sam's face.

"Never," she whispers and kisses his forehead. "You could never be bad, Sam."

Sam's not sure he believes her, not yet. He loves Ruby, loves her more than the sun and the moon and the stars, but he doesn't trust her. He's still scared that something awful is living and breathing in him, waiting for the right moment to burst forth. Ruby's words are the most meager of comforts, no real answer or real assurance, but Sam takes them for what they're worth. He clings to them.

Life on the road has taught him to take what he can while it's there. Tomorrow the world will surely change.

\-----

The next few days are mercifully quiet.

Sam's grateful for the reprieve, especially after flipping out at pretty much everyone in his life. He's not sure it wasn't warranted, but all the same, he feels a stony awkwardness in his stomach when Dean comes home from work and offers him a stiff smile and little more. Their conversations since the incident have been short and perfunctory. Sam doesn't know if that's a good thing or not.

Half of him wants to avoid talking about it, to wish it all away and pretend it never happened. Half of him, though, wishes Dean would do something more.

He's not about to rock the boat any more than he already has though, so he keeps his head down and stays quiet. He does his homework and does the laundry and waits, as patiently as he can, for his father to come home.

Of course, the date that their dad had said he'd be home by comes and goes, as it so often does, and Sam's not surprised -- there's no shock on Dean's face either. He can tell that Dean is waiting for Sam to pick a fight about it, and he hates that this is his role in the family, that he already has a stereotype and it's the troublemaker. He doesn't say anything, though, lets the day pass unremarked. It's nothing new that Dad is late, and complaining about it has never changed anything. Sam just wants to get by under the radar, and this time, he might actually be glad to leave when their dad gets back.

Sally hasn't spoken to him since the night he freaked out. She's still in class with him, but she makes sure to position herself as far away from him as possible. Dean hasn't asked about her, thankfully, hasn't done any annoying girlfriend jokes. Dealing with Dean's inability to understand Sam is hard on a normal day -- rougher still when Sam has to accept that he's lost a friendship due to his own freakiness. 

He tries to remind himself that they'll be leaving, that they'll always be leaving, and there's no real point in trying to form friendships when he's always going to have to watch them fade away behind him. All the same, it still hurts, and Sam feels like he has no reprieve.

He and Dean aren't talking. There's no one at school to talk with. Even he and Ruby are more distant than normal.

The whole thing makes Sam feel isolated, bereft of all the things that are important to him. He just wants someone to give him some kind of guidance, some kind of direction.

And then he gets a D on his math quiz.

Ms. Parker almost looks pleased to give it to him, as if he fulfilled all her expectations of him, and the thought pisses him off. Dean has a right to be mad at him. Sally sure as hell has a right to be mad at him. But Ms. Parker is just a teacher that doesn't know him, whose job has been to counsel and grow him and instead she's smiling down at him as she gives him a nearly failing grade.

He goes home that day and buries himself in his calculus textbook, determined to be prepared for the test next week.

The fact of the matter is that their dad can lie to him. Sam can fight and argue and do his worst, but at the end of the day, nothing is going to make their dad spill his secrets. Their dad is going to lie to them because that's his MO, and it saddens Sam, disappoints him, but it's not Sam's fault. Ruby and Cas are going to keep their secrets and Sam's father is going to lie and Dean is going to stay silent but numbers? Numbers never lie.

He can't figure out what he is, and there's so many battles in his life that he doesn't know how to win, but he knows how to win this one. Numbers always win. Numbers never lie and Sam spends his afternoons in the library, teaching himself the problems that his teacher is supposed to be teaching him, scribbling the equations out on a paper next to him, pointedly ignoring all of Ruby's over dramatic yawns.

It's hard and not particularly fun, but Sam is nothing if not determined, and it's worth it when he forces Ms. Parker to write that A+ down on his test. She can fight him, but she can't win, not with this. Numbers don't take sides. Numbers don't keep secrets. And it doesn't matter how much his teacher dislikes him, numbers are always fair.

It's the first time in three weeks that Sam feels like there's even the possibility that things might turn around.

And it's the high he's riding that he blames when he sits on the edge of Dean's bed that night.

"Dude, what--" Dean croaks, having fallen into his lumpy single not too long after coming home. He worked the late shift tonight, not getting in until past midnight.

"Hey," Sam says quietly.

"Sam, please let me be unconscious."

"I wanted to talk."

Dean groans and rolls over on to his back, slinging an arm over his eyes.

"...You know I don't really think the food comes from nowhere, right?" Sam asks softly, feeling guilt swoop in his stomach.

"Sam, what the fuck--" Dean pauses, thinking, obviously having forgotten his words from two weeks previous. Then he groans again. "Sam, please tell me you didn't wake me up from the sleep I need to work to tell me you appreciate the fact that I work."

"I appreciate the fact that you work," Sam says with a little smirk.

"You little shit," Dean replies without heat. Sam smiles to himself and shifts around, lifting up the covers to scoot under. He's seventeen and way too old for this. He may be skinny but he's still not tiny, and Dean's even bigger -- takes up most of the bed all by himself. All the same, Sam crawls in like he hasn't in years, since Dean started telling him to sleep in his own bed.

"Sam--" Dean starts and Sam flushes a little, but doesn't stop his motions. He knows he's risking teasing, knows he's risking Dean calling him a girl, but he wants this. Needs it.

His family is literally the only thing he has. He doesn't stay in one place. He doesn't have teachers or guidance counselors that know him. He doesn't have friends or friends of the family. He doesn't have anything except his father, his brother and their car. They're all he has, and most days he feels like he's losing them.

"I'm sorry I punched you," he murmurs, laying on his side. 

For a moment there's just silence. Then Dean rolls over onto his side as well, facing Sam. Sam can only just make out the rise of his brother's cheek in the dark and nothing else.

"Sam," he says, that tone of authority, like he thinks Sam's being picked on at school or something. "What's going on?"

"I just--...I'm sorry."

"Dude, it's okay--"

"I'm sorry."

"Sammy..."

A second later a hand settles against his shoulder, warm through the cotton of his pajamas, broad and strangely hesitant. He feels Dean almost withdraw it, and Sam's scared he will. He leans in, and Dean goes stiff before letting his hand rest there, accepting.

"Sometimes people punch people," Dean finally says, absolving him.

"No they don't," Sam replies, brow furrowed. He's pretty certain that's _not_ what people do at all.

"Well...sometimes brothers punch brothers. It happens. I'm not--... What's going on in that big head of yours, huh? I get mad at you sometimes, Sam, yeah. Sometimes, _a lot_ of the time, you piss me off. But you're still my little brother. Have you been walking around guilting about this for two weeks?"

Sam doesn't know how to say _'yes'_ to that. He tries for _'maybe'_ but ends up just falling silent, his gaze shifting askance.

"Sam..." Dean sighs and then the hand on Sam's shoulder goes around him, tugging him closer, and Sam feels nothing but relief when his face presses up against Dean's warm chest, like he's a little kid again and this is okay. This is okay.

Dean's not wearing a shirt, just flannel pants, so there's nothing for Sam to grasp. He tries anyway, fists curling against his brother's chest, face buried away. He shuts his eyes, and in the darkness, like some temporary suspension of judgment, just starts talking.

"I don't know what to do, Dean," he murmurs, wishing his voice could be stronger, wouldn't break at the slightest thing. "I don't _want_ to fight with you and Dad but then it just _happens_ and I--"

Dean's hand is rubbing up and down over his back, against the cloth of his pajamas. Sam can feel each warm pass, takes it as the promise of amnesty that he hopes it is.

"I _miss_ you," he croaks out. "We always used to do everything together. It was always me'n you. Me'n you against the world. Now you're always into hunts and doing whatever Dad's doing, and I'm--...I'm looking at colleges and working on school and it's like... Every time we move, it's like we're getting further apart. It's like I'm _losing_ you."

The silence after his admission is deafening and the hand on his back stills. For five long seconds Sam holds his breath, afraid of what Dean will say. Even more afraid that he won't say anything at all -- that this'll become another thing they don't talk about, something too easily swept under the rug and ignored. It'll just become another thing that Sam holds bitter inside of him, another abscess to grow painful with resentment.

Then Dean shifts, getting both arms around Sam and holding him tight. The embrace is sure, secure. It's two steel bands around Sam and he's not going to fall, not here, not like this. For a moment, Sam can believe in something again.

"Not gonna lose me, Sammy," Dean promises, no insults, no attempt to cover up the affection with anything. Just true and bare, and Sam's so grateful he could cry.

He doesn't, though. He doesn't say anything else, either. He doesn't want to ruin anything, doesn't want to put his foot in his mouth or step on some Winchester landmine. One step forward, five steps back seems to be the way that Sam lives his life these days, it feels like, but the moment here is too perfect, so Sam stops while he's ahead. He curls up against Dean and goes still, breathing against the warmth of his brother's chest.

It's wrong, the way he needs Dean, the way he waits for him. Sam knows this. He's not stupid, and he's not oblivious, and he might be afraid to look at this thing, to name the way he's always wanted all of Dean's attention for himself, but he can't let it go. It's wrong and it's just about as far from normal as it can be, but Sam clings to the promise anyway, wanting to believe that Dean needs him like he needs Dean.

It feels like it's the only way he'll be able to keep breathing.

Time and the darkness pull on his eyelids, the uncomfortable warmth of Dean's body feeling better than it should, and for the first time in two weeks Sam doesn't feel like he's chasing sleep down. Just before he slips under, though, the moonlight slides over something at the end of the bed, only just visible from the corner of his eye. When his gaze ticks to the side, sleepy and blurred, he sees Castiel and Ruby perched on the edge of the dresser, their long necks entwined, Ruby's beak pressing in under one of Cas's wings and Cas's head pressed to her shoulder.

They are a twisted yin and yang of feathers, one dark and the other light, and Sam smiles to himself, just barely.

It's the last thing he sees before his eyes slip shut, and for the first time in so many nights, he sleeps well.

\-----

The morning comes in lazy and slow and its not Sam's alarm clock the rouses him. It takes him a moment to remember that it's the weekend and even longer to remember where he is -- which is sprawled out across his brother's chest, and apparently drooling, if the little pool he quickly wipes away is any indication.

For a second he's not sure what woke him until he hears the clatter of ceramic in the kitchen and the uneven stomp of heavy boots against the linoleum. Under him, Dean snorts and raises his head.

"Whu--" he starts.

"Dad," Sam replies, looking over to their closed door and feeling strangely guilty, though he hasn't done anything wrong, technically. Even so, Dean feels it too, guilt flickering across his older brother's face before vanishing behind a mask.

"C'mon, kiddo," he says, not too brisk but not too warm, something carefully metered, and the two of them sit up on the small bed. Dean pauses, though, to reach up and muss Sam's hair, shaking his hand against Sam's scalp until his already messy bed hair is beyond saving. Sam wrinkles his nose, unwilling to admit liking the contact, the feel of Dean's fingers on his skin, and tries to straighten his hair.

"Get dressed," Dean commands as he pushes himself up and out of the bed. "Dad'll make us go for a five mile run if he catches us lazing around through half the morning."

Sam doesn't bother to point out that most kids get to sleep in on Saturdays -- what Dean says is true, and Sam really doesn't feel like going outside to run. It's hardly cold, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the last thing Sam wants to do is to banish the last of his bed warmth with an early morning jog through the spring air.

The two of them get up and get dressed perfunctorily, tugging on their clothes and shoes. As normal, most of their things are already packed -- it's standard operating procedure for them to make sure that all things are packed by whatever estimated date their dad gives them for his return. Most of the time he doesn't make it back until later, but every so often he shows up telling them they need to book it out of town, maybe because he pissed someone off he shouldn't have, or the cops want to pin the murders on him -- for whatever reason, they have to go, and Sam's been forced to leave behind things before.

Thankfully, seeing as their dad didn't march straight into their room and tell them it was time to go, it didn't seem like it was that kind of departure.

It takes Sam about thirty more seconds than Dean to get himself together, trying to make it look like he _didn't_ just stumble out of bed, and he jogs out the door of their room to catch up with his brother. Dean is standing just in the living room, an expression of confusion on his face, and Sam's query as to why dies when he comes around the doorway to see their dad.

He looks-- Bad's not the word. Drunk. Haggard.

Their father is sitting on the couch, hunched over in front of the crappy little coffee table. He's got a mug in one hand, but Sam sincerely doubts there's any coffee in there. There's a bottle of whiskey sitting on the table, a quarter empty and the lid off.

He looks as rough as Sam's ever seen him -- there's a week's scruff on his cheeks and jaw and the tint of his skin is sallow and yellowed. There are greenish bruises under his eyes, more wrinkles there than Sam remembers, and his hair is uncombed. John Winchester has never been known for being well dressed or well put together, but this is something entirely different. His clothes are shoddily put on, like he's slept in them, jacket sagging off of one shoulder. He takes a swig of the stuff in the mug. Straight whiskey, Sam suspects, no reason to believe it's watered down.

Drunk and getting drunker.

"Dad..." Dean starts, and they're used to the hangovers, used to their dad nursing a bottle of something, but this looks different. More, somehow, and even Dean knows it. "You alright?"

Their dad glances up at them, a flick of dark eyes and then a wince, the morning light too hard on him and he returns to his mug. He polishes off whatever's left in there and puts it down on the table. Sam sees his hand is shaking as he pours himself another. Sam's only just trying to figure out why their dad is doing this all one handed when he hears Dean inhale. He glances at his brother and follows the line of his gaze down to their dad's other hand, a revolver clasped loosely in his grasp.

Sam frowns, glancing back and forth between his dad and his brother, trying to figure out what the hell is happening.

"Dad?" Sam asks and doesn't know quite what to say when John flinches. Their father, strong and proud, draws his brows together as if in pain and Sam sees his nostrils flare, fighting back tears. Sam's mouth works soundlessly.

"...I don't want to do this," is the first thing their dad says to them that morning. The words make sense individually, but Sam's not sure what they mean together like that, like this. Dean looks confused as well, but his body is held stiff, hunter's instincts up. "I don't want to do this," he repeats. "But I don't have a choice."

"Don't want to do what?" Dean asks, taking one step forward before stopping on the click of the revolver being cocked. "...Dad?"

John raises his hand, slow and trembling, with booze or exhaustion or emotions Sam's not sure. All he can see is the way the gun lifts, the black hole of the muzzle coming up to stare into Sam's eyes, to look straight into him, just like when he and Dean had been cleaning the guns, and just like then, every piece of muzzle discipline drilled into him fights against it. The only difference is that this time there's real danger. This time there's a man pointing a loaded gun at him. His _father_ is pointing a loaded gun at him. Sam wants to move, wants to shift because that's what he's meant to do, but his father's finger is on the trigger and Sam goes still.

"I don't want to do this," John repeats, voice thin and warbling just slightly.

"Dad." Dean's voice is soft and cold, a warning and a fear there. "Put the gun down."

"I don’t have a choice."

"You _do."_

"I have to."

"What the hell are you talking about?! You don’t _have_ to kill your own son! Dad! Put the damned gun down!" Dean's louder now, more demonstrative, and Sam can hear panic hedging in. Dean throws his arms out just slightly, scared of making too quick a motion, but he's trembling with excess energy. Sam can only make it out from the corner of his eye, unable to look away from the barrel of the gun.

"It’s him or the world, Dean. Him or the world and we--...We’re hunters. We save--we save people."

Sam doesn't even know where to begin with that. It's him or the world. Him or the world. The concept is strange and terrifying, and Sam hates it the minute he hears it. He doesn't want to be a monster, a freak. He doesn't want to be a person that would wish harm on another. He's just a kid and his father is going to kill him. His father who hunts demons and wendigos and every evil thing is looking at him down a gun like he's worse than all of them, like Sam's the worst thing he's ever seen. The edges of John's eyes are red but Sam doesn't know if it's from tears or the booze or some combination of the two.

It's sick that he's grateful that his dad is torn up over this. That he takes his father being _sad_ about having to kill him as an affection.

"Dad..." he breathes, wanting to explain, wanting to offer an explanation for something he has no explanation for. He wants to make excuses, but the truth is that he has no idea what's going on. He hasn't done anything.

John lets out a broken noise, half a cry at Sam's whispered word, and Dean is moving in the same instant. Sam feels the force of his brother's yank, feels himself pulled off balance and stumbling away in the same instant he hears the loud retort of the gun. He crashes into Dean's side, hands coming up automatically to steady himself. He's still shocked, still reeling when his head snaps to the side to look at their dad.

Their dad who just tried to _kill_ him.

"Dean, what are you doing?" John asks as he stands up, gun still held out, still trained on Sam like he'll kill them all at any moment. Sam doesn't understand. He doesn't _understand._

 _"Saving_ someone," Dean replies, voice gritty, angry and grieved both at once.

Their father's jaw clenches and he cocks the revolver again, his brow firming. Sam can see the tears in his eyes, can hear the way his breath wavers, and he can see his father's finger tightening against the trigger.

Dean yanks him around, covers him, Sam pulled up against his brother's chest, and Sam processes what Dean is doing too late to do anything other than yell.

"Dean!"

His hands come up, not wanting his brother to die for him, not wanting his brother to die at _all,_ but just before the second shot rings out he hears his father's cry. Sam is frozen for a second, frozen against Dean and wondering if the bullet hit, where the bullet hit, wondering if his brother is dying right now. His hands pat over Dean's back, though they can only reach so far, and it's only when Dean draws up that Sam sees the shot went wide, that Dean isn't hit.

Just beyond his brother's shoulder he can see both Ruby and Cas attacking their father, claws out and cries wicked, wings beating against him. Sam knows what this will look like to their father, though: an invisible force attacking him, stopping him from killing his apparently supernaturally dangerous son. It won't matter what Sam says now.

He wonders if it ever mattered what he said. John had already taken the shot. 

He'd already been certain.

"Go!" Dean yells, and for a moment Sam just stands there. "GO!"

The second shout breaks through somehow, echoing in Sam's ear, and he jumps, stumbling over himself as he turns to run, grace failing him. He scrambles into the hallway, hearing the stomach-churning medley of his father yelling and Cas and Ruby screaming, and Sam crashes shoulder first into a wall. Then he's running for the door, aware of only the drive to get away, to save himself. 

For a second, the sound of Dean's footsteps vanish behind him, and Sam almost sobs, almost breaks, but then Dean's shoving him out the door and he sees the bags in his brother's hands.

"Go, go!" he keeps urging, and Sam commits, his feet slamming against the broken pavement as he runs. The air is tight cold in his windpipe, in his lungs, and his heart is pounding in his chest and in his head. He runs full out, the fear of life in him and the only thing he clings to is that Dean is just behind him. Both of them run hard, Sam picking no particular direction other than 'away.'

Castiel is with them in a second, Ruby still back with John, and Sam's scared for her, terrified that at any moment he'll hear the shot, feel the _cut_ inside of himself as she dies. He's almost tempted to go back.

"She will follow," Castiel promises, his wings spread and flying next to them, his beak unmoving but his voice undeniable.

So Sam runs.

Sam runs from all the secrets and the lies and ever deeper into the darkness they never leave behind.


	3. A Flower with a Thousand Petals

When Dean was seven, old enough to know what his dad was doing, old enough to know that not everyone had freaky, stoic angels that could turn into huge white birds following them around, he broke his rule about not talking about Cas and tried to tell his dad. Not as a child insisting on the presence of an imaginary friend but as a hunter who should know better.

"You know..." he'd started. "You know angels?"

"What about them, kiddo?" John had replied, distracted and reading some old tome.

"Are they...you know. Real?"

"No." John's response had been immediate, unwavering. Dean had rubbed his arm.

"What if...you know. You have a friend. Who says they can see an angel? Like...a guardian angel."

"S'just nonsense, Dean," John had cut him off, sitting up to look over at his son. "People like to believe in fairy tales. Nevermind that fairies'd eat you soon as look at you. There are no angels. Anyone who tells you different is a fool or delusional."

Dean had known that his father didn't know, had no _way_ of knowing, but he couldn't help but wince at that. For a while, he wondered if he really was crazy, one of those obsessive religious types that couldn't accept reality. Except Sam was the same and they couldn't _both_ be delusional in exactly the same way. Sam sees Castiel plain as day, just like Dean can see Ruby.

Dean tried to bring it up with his dad again, tried to find the right words as the days stretched into weeks stretched into months, but by the time he was ten, he'd just accepted that only he and Sam could see these things. Besides, Cas and Ruby never _hurt_ anyone. They weren't like the things that Dad hunted. Dean rationalized that that made it okay to not say anything. It was okay to keep it a secret.

Sam, being the epic geek that he was, did research. Once he knew about the hunts, knew about all the things that went bump in the night and knew, just as Dean had once realized, that other people weren't like them, he wanted answers. Dean actually found himself helping, carrying books around for his nine year old brother, the two of them pouring over texts and having to look words up in a copy of the OED that Sam kept, trying to find answers for why they each had their own mystical shadow. Cas and Ruby would just watch and offer nothing. Which was great.

And at first that not knowing makes him nervous, knowing he's a hunter, knowing he's supposed to know these kinds of things. But it's hard to stay nervous when Castiel has always been there, and Sam and Ruby are so inseparable. It's clear that neither of them want to hurt any of the Winchesters(even if Ruby _is_ a bitch who draws mustaches on him in _permanent goddamned marker_ at night). By the time Dean's thirteen, he's stopped wondering. Besides, it's not like Cas hasn't saved him on hunts multiple times. 

The only problem is that while talking about it is hard, it turns out _not_ talking about it is even harder. Or at least, keeping it a secret is harder.

It had been easy enough when Sam and he were younger and their companions were dismissed as childish fantasy, the results of overactive imaginations mixed with trauma. Besides, their father had been too wrapped up in his own grief and his need for revenge to look at it any deeper. Back then, it was enough that they got by -- that Dean and his brother were still alive, still whole and unbroken, and if they had to make up imaginary friends to cope, John clearly accepted that as par for the course.

By the time Dean was a teenager, though, and Sam hovering on the edge of pre-teen, the height of their father's grief had passed, dulled itself to a mere whisper. The man had honed his skills, taken everything he'd learned as a marine and turned himself from being a hunter of men to being a hunter of Other. He was too good at his job, too good at spotting the things that didn't fit, the odd man out, the strange coincidences that were something more, and Dean sometimes caught his father watching them oddly.

Sam more than Dean though and it always made Dean uneasy.

Dean remembers a cabin out in the middle of Colorado and a conversation that should have raised his suspicions, should have grabbed his attention but didn't.

"Dean," his father's voice had been low and calm one day in October last year, a steaming mug of black coffee in his hand. The place they'd been staying at the time barely had any heat, and they were far enough north that it was pretty cool out already, the temperature difference in the air enough to make the steam visible, John's big hand holding onto the handle of the chipped old mug.

When John had spoken up, Dean had turned to look at him, tossing one arm over the back as he twists his body.

"Yes, sir?"

"How is Sam doing?" he'd asked, and the question had hit Dean sideways. For starters, his dad's voice had that odd lilt to it -- Dean had made a profession over analyzing his father's speech and mannerisms. They were partners out in the field. It was hard to not get to know a guy when you needed him to defend your back. But secondly, it hadn't been a question that their dad was given to ask, not unless something was already wrong. Not unless he already had something on his mind.

Dean's brow had furrowed. 

"How d'you mean?" he'd queried.

"I mean exactly as I said -- how is Sam doing? Has anything been happening while I was away? Anything of note?"

"No, nothing of-- Sir," Dean had shaken his head, interrupting himself, because John could always get Sam to play this game, but John was usually straight with Dean. "What is this about?"

John hadn't say anything for a moment, then shook his head.

"Nothing." He'd been wearing that contemplative look on his face, the one Dean was used to -- more going on in his father's head than he was willing to divulge, but Dean didn't usually question it. It was enough that he believed his dad knew what was best.

At least, it had been.

Until Dean saw his father lift a gun and fire it at his little brother.

Dean feels like an idiot in the aftermath. It's not like the clues weren't there. It's not like he didn't know something was wrong, weeks before, months before, _years_ before it happened. He remembers John looking at Sam when he was five, remembers the way that their dad looked so weary, watching Sam laugh at nothing -- at least, to his eyes -- Ruby twirling tricks in the sky for the kid. Dean remembers their dad asking strange questions over the years, remembers all the weird little things that hadn't quite made sense. But Dean had always tucked them away, ignored them.

He'd always told himself that it was their dad. Their dad knew what was best. Their dad was a hero.

And Dean had believed that.

And Dean never thought that there was anything their dad could do to change the way he saw him. He'd never thought their dad would try to hurt _Sam._

And now Dean's paying the price for his willful ignorance. That wouldn't be too bad though, if Sam weren't paying for it too. Sure, they managed to get away intact, managed to get out of that house without any bullet holes in them, but it's not like that solved many problems. It's been weeks since they ran and they're no where closer to finding any solutions.

Dean's twenty two and Sam's eighteen now and they're all they have. Each other and Cas and Ruby.

They don't dare to call Caleb or Pastor Jim, don't dare to call any of their dad's contacts. Dean knows that those are the first places that John will check. Dean and Sam are his prey now, are the hunted, and John will keep them from going to ground. The only way that Dean can think of to keep his little brother safe is to keep them moving, keep them walking and hitchhiking their way around the country in random patterns, no trail to trace.

It's far from the life that Sam deserves, and Dean can't help but think that it would have been better somehow if he'd manned up and looked at that signs earlier. At least then, Sam wouldn't have to have the memory of his own father firing a gun at him rattling around in his head. 

Dean thinks he can see the memory sometimes, just behind Sam's eyes when he stares out at nothing, stares down whatever nameless highway they're walking, each of them with a bag in hand, their heron-like guardians flying above them.

The worst part, though, the part that keeps Dean up at night, that eats at him, is the way he misses his father.

The man was a psycho who tried to murder his own son. He yanked his kids around the country on some quest for revenge, put them in dangerous situation after dangerous situation and all the while he thought of his own child as a monster. Was planning to murder him.

Dean should hate John, he knows that. And he does. He feels hurt, betrayed by what John did to them, what he tried to do to Sam. But Dean also misses him, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

He can't talk with Sam about it and it feels weird bringing it up with Cas, even, on the rare occasions when Sam is out of his sight, these days.

Dean made his choice. He can't go back to John now -- doesn't want to, really. He'll never trust the man again. He'll never forgive him for trying to hurt Sam.

Dean just wishes he knew what to do now.

He wishes he knew anything with the certainty he'd known when he still believed in John.

\-----

When they get into Newport at the beginning of July, exhausted doesn't even begin to cover it.

It's rainy as crap when Dean and Sam book into the Sea Lodge Inn on the last few bucks that Dean has. He's been hustling whenever they have a chance to pass a bar but it's not enough. Paying for everything without the cards, paying for the motels, the food, the clothes, is so much harder than Dean had predicted. He hadn't realized just how much they depended on those credit cards to get by -- had never had to really tally up what they spent. After all, it wasn't their money. They used credit card fraud to get by. There weren't bills or account statements or anything like that.

They used cash to buy weapons and pizza and the occasional bribe.

Now they were using it for everything.

When they open the door, the both of them dripping and shivering, hair flattened by the rain, Dean's just about ready to collapse. They couldn't get anyone to stop in the downpour, which meant they had to walk the last twenty miles into town.

Which had been a world of suck.

Dean groans and collapses forward on the first bed that presents itself.

"You're gonna get the sheets wet," Sam comments, tossing his bag down on the floor. They're lucky the material is waterproof -- even so, Dean's betting that there's a fair bit that's dripped through the zipper of the duffel.

"Don't care," Dean mumbles into the comforter, listening to his little brother wander around the room, the squishy sound of sodden jeans making his own legs itch. 

He really wants to get up and take them off, to let his drenched skin get fresh, dry air, but he's too tired to think of pushing himself off the bed, so he just contents himself with soaking it.

"Your brother is right, Dean," Cas says, far too evenly.

"Can't you go and preen with Ruby?"

"We are already dry."

"Isn't that special for you," Dean mutters into the covers.

"You will get the bed wet. You will complain later when you have to sleep in it."

"Dean!" Sam calls from the bathroom. Dean groans and gives into the reality that he can't stay face down on a bed for the rest of time, pushing himself up with a wince.

"What!" he calls back.

"Do we have enough for pizza?"

It's probably all they have, really. Eighteen bucks left over after getting the room and it'll have to do for feeding themselves. Tomorrow Dean can go out and find a bar, after he's cleaned all the grit and road wash off of his face, made himself look a little less like a hobo. They should go for something cheaper but the idea of delivery is too tempting to pass up. He orders the pizza against his better instincts, trying to get as much out of their remaining cash as possible as he wheedles the guy on the phone for deals and waits for Sam to finish up with the shower.

By the time the food gets there both of them have washed up and Dean feels considerably more human, warmed through by the hot water(and thank god this place had real plumbing and proper water pressure) and dried off with the shitty motel towels. They're both in their night clothes, Dean's cotton pants and Sam in boxers and a t-shirt. The kid's been growing like a weed over the last three months, finally hitting some more growth spurts, and his legs, long and coltish, stick out from his boxers, pale and bony. Dean wonders what their dad would think if he could see Sam now, see him growing up, becoming a man.

Dean wonders if John would even notice, or if he'd just lift the gun again and take his next shot.

Dean's eyes dart off of Sam's legs, for more than one reason, and he's glad for the knock on the door.

They settle down, the four of them, the TV on in background as he and Sam eat. Neither Cas nor Ruby need to eat to live, but Ruby's always enjoyed the act and Dean lets her get away with stealing a slice.

Not without some bitching, though.

"You know, some of us need this to _survive,"_ he says pointedly, though the effect is somewhat ruined with his mouth full.

"Cheese is necessary to survival," the demon returns without a pause, lifting the drippy piece to her mouth. Cas is giving her a disapproving look, but honestly, it's kind of his default expression.

"Well, then you can get a job and pay for your _own_ pizza. Oh wait, no one can _see_ you." He grabs another slice before Ruby can go for it, but she's just smirking to herself, enjoying her take.

"We need to find out what I am," Sam says soft and apropos of nothing. Dean wishes he could be surprised, but over the last three months it's been their most common topic.

"Sam," is all he says, the name warning enough.

"No," Sam returns, stubborn mule as always. "Dean, I'm right. You know I'm right. We can't just keep ignoring this. Our _father_ tried to _kill_ me. Don't you think that requires some investigation?"

"No."

"'No'? Really? That's all you have to say? Dean, we have an invisible angel and an invisible _demon_ following us around. I have a demonic guardian and three months ago, our father, a demon hunter, decided that whatever I am is bad enough that he had to kill me."

"And the thing you take away from that is that we should go poking the hornets’ nest?"

"It's not the hornets’ nest, Dean. It's the truth. Whatever it is, it's the truth."

"And if it isn't?" Dean asks, jaw clenched.

"Then we keep looking until we _find_ the truth. I don't know what's so weird about that."

"Just drop it, Sam." Dean tosses his slice back into the box. He's not hungry anymore. He glances up at their guardians, Ruby's expression concerned and Cas looking out the rainy window. Whatever their secrets are, they've maintained them for over twenty years now. He doesn't expect them to suddenly up and change. Despite Sam's words, they remain silent.

Most days, Dean feels like he's only just holding on. He's not going to rock the boat.

He gets up from the floor, wiping his hands off on the sides of his pants.

"Dean!" Sam yells, getting up after him. Dean presses his lips tight together and turns to look at his little brother -- Sam, sprouted up three more inches and still so freakin' young. His hair hangs in his face, around his neck, even longer than before without Dad to enforce the regular hair cuts. He still looks like a kid, and Dean always wants to keep that true. Every day his only goal is to keep Sam okay until they go to bed.

He failed three months ago and Dean can see how it wears in Sam's eyes. He can see in the way that Sam stares sometimes, looks at nothing and goes far away and hurt. Dean can still see his little brother hunched over in a field in nowhere Tennessee, sobbing as he retches, the two of them panting from the hectic run. Dean can still see Sam in the wake of their father's madness.

"No, Sam," Dean says, low and determined. "I'm tired of having this conversation."

"I want to know, Dean. I just want to know!" Sam looks desperate, torn, and that scares Dean. "Dad-- What happened--"

"Dad was going to end your life, Sam!" Dean snapped finally, doing his best to keep the fear from his voice and knowing he was failing. "I’m not about to let you do the same by getting obsessed with this thing!" 

Dean doesn't know what the answer would be. He doesn't want to find out. He doesn't want to watch Sam grow more and more obsessed until one day he turns into their dad. Until he finds out something he can't deal with and tries to finish the job their father's insanity started. Dean isn't going to let that happen.

And with that, it becomes startlingly clear exactly what they're going to do.

"You always wanted to be out?" Dean asks. "Well, we’re out. We’re gonna get a house and I’ll get a job and you’re gonna finish school. End of discussion."

Dean's expecting more, though, despite his words. He's expecting a fight -- he and Sam love each other and Dean's never doubted his brother's goodness, his loyalty, but the two of them can go at it like pit vipers sometimes. He's shut this discussion down more than just a few times in the last three months so he's expecting this to be the big one, for Sam to kick out with all the rage he has to be carrying -- so Dean's surprised when he sees his little brother's shoulders slump, sees him deflate a little and say:

"...Alright."

"What did you say?" Dean asks, maybe more aggressively than he really needs to, still a little ramped up.

"Al _right,"_ Sam repeats, brow pinched. Dean is quiet, lets the moment hang, waiting for something else: for the other shoe to drop, for things to get worse. But it doesn't, they don't, and Dean lets out a long breath.

"...Alright," he says, nodding a little. Dean still finds himself standing there, waiting for more, but in the silence that remains he knows it's the right thing to do.

It's not much of a plan. Dean's not sure how the hell he's going to pull it off, doesn't even know where to start, but Sam deserves this. After all he's been through, after having his only parent try to kill him, he deserves to get what he wants, what he's always wanted. 

And Dean will be damned before he fails Sam again.

"Go to bed," he orders, but more gently. Sam looks tired, has looked tired for three months now and Dean's pretty sure he doesn't look much better. The two of them have been sleeping in the damned gutters some nights, been struggling to get by, all the in the wake of a loss that Dean can't deal with and that Sam can't even put words to. And Dean knows that if he's having a hard time with it, then Sam has to be practically suffocating.

It's not like Dean's the one their dad tried to kill.

It's not like Dean's the one with a demon watching over his shoulder -- which Dean knows, _knows_ is a problem. He's not an idiot and Sam's not wrong.

They _hunt_ demons, after all. 

And okay, Ruby isn't that kind of demon. She's not possessing anyone, in the same way that Cas isn't possessing anyone. They're both just _there,_ and Dean and Sam have never found any explanation for their presence. Dean isn't afraid of Ruby, doesn't look at her and think _'evil'_ or even _'wrong.'_ She's always been looking out for Sam, just like Cas looks out for Dean. But it's not like Dean doesn't get why Sam's curious, why he wants to know. Some days, Dean would do anything to know.

But not today.

Today Dean just wants to be able to give Sam something good for once, and whatever mysterious truth is lurking out there can stay mysterious, for all he cares. He doesn't want any part of it.

He goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth, staring himself down in the mirror and hears Sam getting into the creaky bed. Dean spends a little more time washing up than is strictly necessary, trying to stay the adult, trying to keep his cover going so Sam doesn't see the worry, so Sam doesn't see that Dean has no idea how they're going to do this. He'll figure it out though. He has to.

He walks out of the bathroom and into the darkened room, moving around the end of Sammy's bed. He sees both Cas and Ruby over by the window, protective sentinels, and whoever they are, whatever they're here for, Dean's so damned thankful for them in that moment. He stops in between the beds, next to Sam's, and reaches down to tug the sheets up over his brother's shoulder. Sam glances up but doesn't say anything and Dean tries for a smile.

Against his better instincts, he reaches down to run his hand through Sam's still damp hair, the long strands slipping through the fingers. He pauses for an instant, awkward and wanting to linger, but he forces himself to pull back, to ignore the soulful look in his brother's eyes.

He's going to do this. He's going to give Sam something normal. Something good.

He doesn't care about anything else.

Dean gets into bed, thinking about his father, his little brother, and despite his own words, why the hell all of this happened to them.

\-----

The first time Dean had sex, Castiel was there.

"God, you're hot," Joan had said, seveneen years old and curvy as all fuck, a walking wet dream, and Dean had been two weeks shy of fifteen -- a sophomore bedding the hottest senior at the suburban high school they were currently stopped in. Her hair had been in a ponytail and Dean had freaking loved it, the way it bobbed back and forth when she put her mouth on him, when she blew him.

His head had been tipped back and he'd been groaning, eyes shut, thinking _This is fucking perfect,_ until he'd made the mistake of opening his eyes and looking up, seeing Castiel watching him with the exact same expression he always wore. Dean had choked, used to the angel always being there, but never before having thought that the freak would just _watch him have sex._

 _"Crap,_ fuck," he'd grit out, and Joan lifted her head.

"Something wrong?"

"No, shit," he'd shook his head, looking down at her, because Christ, there was no way he wanted her to stop. But there was also no way he was losing his virginity while Castiel just stood around like he was watching the fucking Discovery Channel special, _The Mating Habits of Humans._ "Just...gimme a sec, okay?"

"Uh, yeah, okay," she'd replied, but she'd looked uncertain, like he was nuts, and he'd been aware he looked it. He'd gotten really good at ignoring Cas, at going through life with the angel always around, so much so that he didn't even blink about changing or getting in the shower, didn't think it was weird when the angel stood around in the locker room at the school. It wasn't like Castiel was a human. He got about as much out of seeing a human naked as he did a squirrel, and besides, Castiel was a _part_ of Dean. Dean felt the same way about getting naked in front of Cas as he did getting naked in front of himself, because there was no real difference. 

Having said all that, sex had been new and Cas still _looked_ like a person -- a person who was just standing there staring at him, even if he wasn't one.

"I'll be right back, promise," Dean had assured Joan before he got off of the bed, walking over to the bathroom with a wince, moving with a spit-slick erection more than a little awkward. He'd shut the door immediately, because it wasn't like Castiel needed doors. He didn't even walk through walls -- he was just there, just in whatever room that Dean was in, automatically.

"What is it?" the angel had asked, completely lacking in any kind of clue.

"You...have to stay here."

"Where?"

 _"Here._ In the bathroom."

"That makes no sense. Why must I stay in the bathroom?"

 _"Dude,"_ Dean had said, shaking his head. "I'm about to get _laid._ I don't need you to get all...judgy."

"Judgy?"

"You know, pre-marital sex and all that. Doesn't God like...frown on that?"

Castiel had appeared to think about this for a second, but when he'd looked back at Dean, it was with the same calm perplexment. 

"Most animals have sex without a ceremony beforehand."

Dean had rubbed his face and thought, for what has to be the fiftieth time, that life would've been easier if he'd gotten the demon.

"Look, just... I want to get my freak on without you... _staring_ at us. It's creepy, man."

"I means nothing to me," Castiel had replied, uninterested. "It is no different than watching you eat, or drive, or urinate. It is merely a motion of your body."

"Okay, okay." Dean had held up both hands. "I get that. Because you're a _freak._ But you see me? I'm a _normal person._ A normal person with a crazy hot chick ready to get up on my dick in the next room. So I'm going to need you to stay here in the bathroom while I get my crank yanked. You can do your weird staring thing at the wall or something. All I'm saying is, no leaving the bathroom until I'm... you know. Done."

"I suppose I can do that," Castiel had conceded. "I am close enough to protect you, should anything happen."

"Nothing bad is going to happen." Dean had paused. "...hopefully nothing bad's going to happen. But I don't think the dangers of STDs is really what you're talking about."

Castiel hadn't replied and Dean'd been half tempted to push, to try and get some info out of the guy, to make Cas tell him what the fuck he thought was going to happen that Dean needed 24/7 protection from, because it wasn't like Dean wasn't _curious._ But standing around naked in the crappy bathroom of their shitty rental house with a half hard cock hadn't been the time or place for that kind of conversation. He'd been curious, but not curious enough to pass up a roll in the hay with freaking Joan Hudson. 

Thankfully, his talking to himself in the bathroom for a couple of minutes hadn't scared her off, and she'd still been waiting when he'd emerged.

From then on, whenever Dean was getting some tail, Castiel stayed in the bathroom of whatever establishment they were in.

It was tradition.

The day after they get into Newport, Dean is getting thrown back against some chick's bed and it's great. No. It's _awesome._ He'd gone out to score some cash, managing to rake in about $300, all stuffed in his back pocket, and then he'd met _Kathy._ Kathy's a yoga instructor and Dean thinks that's the best job he's ever heard of.

He hits the bed with an 'oof' and grins as Kathy crawls up over him, thighs straddling his hips and fingers working at the button to his jeans. Her smile is wicked and gorgeous, her dyed red hair curling over one shoulder. Dean wants to reach up and move it away, scoop it into his hand and lean in to lick her neck. He settles for getting his hands on her hips, running them up her waist. He feels the skin compress, wrinkle, feels her flesh shift with the slight pressure.

He loves this, moments like this.

He loves the feel of humanity, connection. He loves how normal and mundane it is, how real. She is flesh and blood and bone, she is noise and motion. She is a yoga instructor and a woman and she drives a Caddy. She has a poster with a kitten on it on her walls.

She is a collection of things, individual and remarkable -- every person he's ever taken to bed is. He doesn't remember them, not all of them anyway. He doesn't keep some black book or names and doesn't hold their faces in his head or anything like that. They're his one night stands, his bits of fun to be had, and he's just as much there for them to get off with.

It's sex, good and fun and without guilt. 

It's moments like these, rolling over and pressing her into the mattress, pressing his thumbs under her breasts and feeling the slight, fresh slick of sweat, that he feels like he's part of this world where there aren't monsters or guardian angels. Kathy is beautiful and curvy, bendy and laughing, and he doesn't love her, just like she doesn't love him, but that's never stopped it from feeling good. She smiles at him without expectation or trepidation and he grins back before going down on her, spreading a cut open latex glove over the length of her and pressing his tongue in.

It's a great evening. Perfect, even.

Three hundred dollars is stacked in his pocket, curled up and wrapped in a rubber band inside of his pants, now tossed on to the floor, and he has this fucking gorgeous, freaking flexible chick all over him. She's fun and happy and in moments like this Dean forgets that he's not. He forgets that his life sucks and that things are hard. He forgets that he dropped out of high school to look after his little brother and help his father. He forgets that he barely remembers his mother, that he learned to load a shot gun before he learned to tie his shoes. He forgets that everything falls to him now, that he's the head of what remains of their family, that Sam is depending on him, that their father is gone, out of the picture. He forgets, just for a few hours, that he's responsible, and he gets to be Kathy's handsome one night stand.

After three rounds, spread out over a couple hours, they collapse to the bed, breathing hard and both of them a mess. Dean doesn't care. He still tucks her in close, feels the swell of her breasts press to him and presses his face into the slight stiffness of her styled hair, now all destroyed and gorgeous from their sex.

He stays for a few more hours, getting up in the middle of the night. He's not big on sneaking out -- usually he likes to stay until the morning, have some breakfast and leave like a respectable human being. His partners aren't just warm bodies. Everyone knows what they're getting into going in. Everyone gets an orgasm and goes home happy. Sure, sometimes he lies about his name, his job. Sometimes he likes to be something cooler than what he actually is(being a hunter is pretty cool, but he can't tell people that; on the outside he just looks like a wandering vagrant), but he doesn't lie about that. There's no reason to sneak out.

But now, in the last few months, after John, Dean doesn't like leaving his brother alone too long. He doesn't like the idea that something could happen and Dean wouldn't even be there.

"You leaving?" Kathy asks, rolling over on to her side. The low light shines over her hips, the shadow of the sheets draping there, showing off the just slight curve of her belly, that kind of Botticelli beauty that Dean loves(he'd paid attention to that part of school -- there were naked people). Her hair dangles around her neck and arm, head supported on her hand, locks loose and disorganized. She looks warm. Dean wants to go over and push his fingers through that hair, clear the mess away and kiss her again, maybe see if he can use his fingers to bring her off while he waits for his own body to recharge.

But it's nearly two in the morning.

"I have a little brother," he says, honestly. He could lie, but she'd read it. He's not leaving because he wants to -- he's not slipping out because he's ashamed or embarrassed or because he thinks a woman is only good for a fuck.

She blinks a couple of times and then softens, eyelids dipping and lips curling up.

"That's sweet."

"Eh," he replies, hoping the darkness hides his flush, stupidly pale skin working against him. He shrugs, like it's no big deal. "I mean...He's eighteen, so it's not like--" He shrugs again. "...We're in a strange town. I don't wanna leave him alone too long."

"Go," she replies, smile turning warm. 

He pauses long enough to lean in and kiss her, wet and slow, touching the point of her jaw, cradling there. It lingers, probably a little more than it should, but he finally draws back and offers her a cocksure smile. 

She slips on a robe and walks him out, Cas waiting out on the landing for him, serious faced as ever. Dean ignores him, saying goodbye to Kathy, and she stands in the doorway as he leaves. She'll lock the door behind him and go back to her good life, her normal life.

Dean likes the idea that some of the lives he's touched don't end in tragedy. That there are some people who've seen him and never had to scream, to cry. That they looked at him and smiled instead of running in horror from whatever beast Dean stands in the path of.

That good feeling lasts until he gets back to the motel.

He's expecting Sam to be asleep, or he's at least hoping he will be, and Dean sneaks in, trying to be as quiet as possible, letting Cas walk in before silently shutting the door behind them. It's all moot though. When Dean turns around he can see the moonlight shining in Sammy's open eyes in the darkness. The kid is in bed, at least, laying on his side with blankets pulled up to his shoulders, but he's not asleep. 

He doesn't say anything. He knows where Dean's been. 

He just lays there watching.

Dean does his best not to wince, turning to take out his wallet and the cash, counting it one more time to be sure -- and to have something to look at besides Sam, something to do with his hands. When he's done he gets undressed, aware that Sam isn't looking away, knowing his brother is watching, but he does his best to stay casual, to have the both of them pretend like this isn't here, this isn't happening. 

He pulls on his night pants and slips into bed, feeling Sam's gaze like lead weight on his back. He doesn't roll over to look back. Even so, it feels like he can't breathe until he hears the creak of Sam's bed as he turns over, turns his back to Dean without a word.

He feels bad.

He knows he shouldn't. There's nothing wrong with what he did, after all. Going out to see girls is good, normal. It should be what Sam wants. It just isn't. So Dean pushes the guilt down, pushes it away and tugs the scratchy sheets, not half as good as Kathy's, up to his neck.

Sammy deserves to have a good life, after all they've been through. He deserves to have something good and something normal and Dean wants to be the one to give that to him, not take it away.

And this? This thing? It's anything but normal.

He just wishes he could convince himself that he's doing the right thing.

\-----

Dean's always been watching Sam. Always, because his life didn't even really start until Sam was born.

He still remembers the four years before. He still remembers them, but they seem strange and distant. Muted. There's all the memories of his mother and Dean desperately doesn't want to lose those, but at the same time it feels like those four years hardly counted for anything at all.

Nothing counted until someone put Sam in his arms.

Since then Dean's defined himself around his little brother. At first he was Big Brother, given kiddie duties like 'eat your vegetable for Sam' or 'show Sam how you can read that book.' He was the other kid his mom was looking after and through that he had the chance to help her with Sam. But he was still just a kid.

In the wake of their mother's death Dean became a shield. He didn't talk to anyone that wasn't Sam or Castiel or the heron woman that was so suddenly part of his life. Dean lived and breathed for keeping Sam safe and he hated how small his body was, how inconsequential. He wanted to grow up. He wanted to be big and strong and capable of looking after Sam, because their father was gone most days, drunk the rest, and Mike and his wife tried their best but they weren't the boys' parents. In the first six months Dean had been obsessive, watching over Sam every night, determined to never leave him alone.

Later, when they were growing up, Dean was Sam's mom. He made Sam's lunch, tied Sam's shoes, walked Sam to school. He taught Sam how to ride a bike and he bandaged Sam's knees when he scraped them. It was the same later, in some heinous parody, teaching Sam how to fire a gun, how to fight with a knife, and clamping his hand to the deep cut in Sam's inner thigh as their dad sped down the highway, Dean doing everything he could to keep Sam from bleeding out.

Dean was Sam's mother and brother and drill sergeant, but he'd always been there for him. 

Which is why Sam's an idiot for thinking that Dean wouldn't know.

Dean's seen the way that Sam's watched him, ever since the kid was fifteen and it was just a passing curiosity, all the way up until now, eighteen years old and watching with barely cloaked yearning. Dean's not an idiot -- he just plays one on TV. He's played the game, dated and romanced and talked his way into plenty of beds, between plenty of thighs. He knows what desire looks like.

And after, Lizzie, after the girl in Arkansas that he'd thought understood when she completely hadn't, he knew what love looked like. And heartbreak. He knew what to avoid.

He liked sex. He didn't like hurting people.

And the last person in the world he wants to hurt is Sam.

But the worst part is that the problem isn't that Sam wants him -- thought that _is_ a problem -- it's that Dean's never wanted anything _but_ Sam.

It's not _creepy_ (even though it totally is). He wasn't perving on Sam as a kid or anything. He was just in love with him. He's been in love, head over heals, since Sam was that baby wrapped up in a blanket, ugly and squinty and fresh to the world and Dean was gone on him. It's always just been Sam.

He'd just never thought it'd be the same for his brother. And Dean doesn't want it to be. Sam deserves everything. Sam deserves the world. Dean's a high school drop out that's committed three felonies and a host of misdeanors so long he doesn't even remember them all.

Dean's a lost cause. But most of all, Dean is Sam's brother.

And that's why Dean's not going to give into those puppy dog looks that Sam thinks he hides so well. He's not going to do a damned thing to jeopardize Sam's future. Too many people have tried to steal it already -- Dean'll be damned before he joins their ranks. He's going to get Sam a home and a chance and if Dean can do that, if he can just give Sam _enough,_ enough runway to take off with, he'll consider his life a success.

The problem is just that Dean still doesn't know how to do that. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do and with every passing day that's becoming more and more clear.

They're walking through New York in the beginning of August, the cicadas humming and creaking their wayward summer song. The heat is oppressive, beating down on the two of them and burning the back of Dean's neck, sweat tricking down from his hairline and catching in his eyebrows. It's fucking miserable and toting two duffels full of clothes and miscellany doesn't help. They're surrounded by a whole lot of nothing on either side of the endless highway and there hasn't been a car in ages.

Dean doesn't even know how far it is to the next town when he throws his bag down on the asphalt and kicks it.

“This _sucks!”_ he yells, not caring who hears him -- hell, damned well hoping that someone does. Some busty blonde with a pick up truck and a kink for driving people places.

“Well, this is productive,” he hears Sam mumble. 

And that's the problem, really. This isn't productive. None of it is.

Wandering up and down and along America, trying to disappear into nameless roads and faceless motels. They're running from John, avoiding his eye, the eye of any hunter he's still talking to. Dean decided that they were going to have a life, that Sam was going to have a life outside of all this, but the fact of the matter is that Dean doesn't even know how to start that. He doesn't know what to do because no one ever told him and all he's doing is leading them aimlessly. They're stuck in neutral.

He pants on the side of the road, hot and sweaty and miserable, pissed off at everything and with nowhere to focus that anger. 

He hears the beat of wings and then Castiel is next to him, peering at him curiously. Ruby is more demonstrative: a hand resting against his shoulderblade, small and slight.

He shrugs her off, feeling like an asshole, but not feeling worthy of comfort. Not now when he has no answers, when he's supposed to be the one that knows what they're doing.

“If you would like,” Cas offers, “I could carry your bag for you.”

Dean lets out a long breath, a chuckle riding it, but it's self-depricating.

“Bag's not the problem, Cas.”

“Then what is?”

“It's hot and we're in the middle of nowhere, headed _to_ nowhere. I've got no-- What the hell are we even doing? We can't keep up like this forever. It's been four months and I still have no idea what we're going to do.”

“Dean--” Sam starts, coming forward.

Dean looks back at him, expecting the words of empty comfort, knowing already that placating assurance that he's doing fine. This isn't anything like fine, though. He looks back at Sam, the kid growing long and lanky, growing up, and he can still see the haunted look in his brother's eyes.

Their dad failed Sam. Failed him in the worst way possible. Dean's trying to make up for that, but the truth is that he's doing a piss poor job. Weeks have passed and all Dean's managed to do is run them up and down the country, getting lost in it. They're running aimless, still trying to escape their father, and Dean's sick of it.

He takes a deep breath.

“If you could live anywhere, Sam, where would you live?” he asks, because maybe Sam has an idea even if Dean doesn't.

“What?” Sam blinks, his brow furrowed and confused.

“I'm tired of running from Dad. I'm tired of _him_ still calling the shots. He's not here and yet he's still the one in charge of us, the one we've gotta step around. I don't wanna do that anymore. I want--... I want us to run _towards_ something for once.“

Sam watches him, appraises him, like he's trying to figure something out, his eyes tracking over Dean's features, the stiffling August breeze bringing nothing but humidity over the grass. 

“...I have one idea,” he finally admits, his eyes going to the side. He looks like he didn't want to mention it and Dean cants his head to the side in curiosity.

There's an awkwardly long pause before Sam slowly lowers his bag and Dean blinks, not expecting that. Sam doesn't say anything though, just roots around in the bottom of his duffle. He pulls out a full sized envelope, the kind used to mail documents. It's scuffed up and crinkled, but not ripped or torn, and when Sam thrusts it out at him, Dean sees his little brother's name over the mailing address of one of their old P.O. boxes.

Dean stares at it for a second, his eyes flicking up to Sam's face then down again, before reaching out and hesitantly taking it, like it's a snake.

He looks at the return address: Stanford University.

Dean's eyebrows shoot up. He knows what this is.

“Sam,” he says seriously as he looks up at his brother, looks for answers in Sam's set face. Dean can see the tension lodged in Sam's jaw, the way it's clenched. His attention returns to the envelop and he opens it anyway, the flap loose against the back, and he pulls out a welcome packet. An acceptance letter.

“Jesus Christ, Sammy,” he murmurs. His little brother got into Stanford. His little brother got into _Stanford._ He feels proud. And betrayed.

He remembers the night before everything went to shit, the night before their dad pulled a gun, and remenbers Sam sneaking into his bed. Dean remembers that night for a lot of reasons, but he remembers when Sam said that he was looking at colleges. At the time the words had sent a jolt through Dean, but they hadn't really implied that Sam had already sent in applications. That Sam had already been _accepted._

And the thought burns.

He looks up darkly.

“So when were you going to tell me about this?” he asks, not caring that it's the perfect solution to their problems. The point is that Sam didn't tell him. Hadn't told Dean or their dad and kept it his own little secret.

Dean imagines Sam just walking out of their life, him and Ruby just vanishing, and it makes something clench cold. He wonders quickly if maybe Sam still wants to. If Sam still wants to leave. He thinks of the little longing looks Sam sends his way and he thinks maybe it would be best if Sam _did_ want to, if Sam could _want_ to be away from his brother, like how families are supposed to. Dean won't let Sam close, but he doesn't want him far from him either.

“I don't know,” Sam mumbles miserably, eyes darted to the side. “I wasn't even sure if I was _going_ and then everything with Dad happened...”

“But you still _applied._ You applied and you never told me and-- How many others? How many schools did you apply to? Couldn't have just been this place.” Dean's teeth rub together as he looks down at the letter. He tosses it down to the ground, the thing landing in one heavy pile with a _thwap._ “It must have taken you months.”

Sam starts forward at first but stops himself. His entire frame tenses and Ruby flutters up to his shoulders, landing there. His face is set when he looks at Dean again.

“Six,” he says. “I applied to six schools.”

“And you were just going to keep it a secret.” Dean takes in a shaky breath, pulling his shoulders up straight. Sam may be growing but Dean's still taller, can still look down at his little brother. “You were going to keep it a secret until you made up your mind and then just drop it on us when you were ready to walk out the door.”

“There was no point in telling either of you until I _had_ made up my mind, Dean! If I ended up deciding not to, then why go through the drama?”

“That's what we are to you? Drama?”

“No!” Sam makes a sound of frustration. Behind him Ruby's wings puff up, feather's ruffling -- when she's perched like this, wings spread, it almost looks like the wings are coming from Sam instead. “Dean-- I just didn't _know,_ okay? I couldn't-- I hated that life. I just wanted to go to school.”

“Yeah. Away from _us,”_ Dean points out, as if they aren't running from their father right now. It's stupid and he knows it, but the knowledge still hurts. That Sam would do this. That Sam wouln't tell him. That Sam would just walk out the door, out of Dean's life, when Dean doesn't even know who he is anymore if Sam's not there.

“What was I _supposed_ to do?” Sam explodes, a hint of desperation in his tone, his arms flying out to either side.

“Keeping me in the loop would have been nice!”

“Yeah, and where were you? You were out hunting, all the time! And if you were home you were avoiding me. You always took Dad's side. I knew if I told you, you'd run off and tell him!” 

The accusation stings -- because it's true. Dean would have. He would have been the good tin soldier and told their father that Sam was going to leave them. Dean feels betrayed but the truth is that Dean was the one that left Sam. He'd just hadn't had any other choice. The way he felt about Sam, the way he felt about his _brother,_ he'd had to pull away. But the fact of the matter is that Dean's been pushing Sam away for a long time now -- pushing him just far enough but never letting him go. Keeping him trapped in a fixed orbit.

“You would have told Dad,” Sam continues, a ragged edge in his voice. “And then there would have been a fight. Some giant fight and I--...And Dad--”

The breath that Sam draws in is long and shaky, something tight in there like panic seizing up the muscles, just like that morning back in Tennessee, miles away from that house and their father. Just like when Sam was struggling to draw air through the shuddering horror in his chest, Dean trying to hold him and say _breathe, breathe, c'mon Sammy._

“Sam, stop--” Dean steps forward, putting his hands on Sam's upper arms. His general rule is 'no touching' but not now, not like this. Ruby's still there, her feet occupying Sam's shoulders, but Dean's used to it. She and Sam have always been close, a matched pair.

Dean purses his lips and tries again:

“...You're right. Okay? You're right. It just--” Hurt. Stung his pride. He was supposed to be the big brother. He was supposed to be the person that Sam told everything to. But the truth was that it was his own damned fault that Sam didn't believe in him anymore.

“...I thought he was going to yell,” Sam says softly. “I thought he was going to get so mad and we were going to go at it again, shouting things--... I never thought-- I didn't think--”

“No one could have expected that, Sam,” Dean replies, low and gruff. He'd spent his whole life worshipping their dad, doing everything the man told him to. He'd always thought that John'd had the best interests of their family in mind.

He withdraws, looks down at the acceptance letter he tossed to the ground. It's a little scuffed but not dirty and Dean crouches down, filing the papers back together before standing up again. He pauses before handing them back to Sam, watching his little brother take them.

“...Stanford's in California, right?” he asks finally, after an awkward pause.

“Palo Alto,” Sam replies. Dean thinks that's the silliest sounding town name he's ever heard and he spent a significant portion of his childhood in a place called 'Blue Earth.'

“Alright, Palo Alto. Good a place as any,” he declares, doing his best to bury his hurt, his anger that Sam kept this from him. The last thing Sam needs right now is to feel attacked by _another_ family member. 

Dean doesn't care where they go though, so long as they're going. So long as they have a destination. Civvies say it's about the journey, not the destination, but Dean's been on the 'journey' for most of his life. He's ready to damned well arrive. It's a town where Sam will actually be able to go to school, to _college._ It's everything Dean had been telling himself he'd get Sam. And it's not as if he doesn't understand why Sam kept this a secret.

“You sure?” Sam asks, sounding oddly timid, one hand rubbing against the side of his pants. His eyes won't meet Dean's and Dean frowns. 

“...I'm not like him, okay?” he says, knowing that _that's_ what this is about. How could it not be? Dean spent years walking right in step with John, following directly in his father's footsteps and telling Sam to shut it whenever he saw a problem. Things are different now, though. Dean's going to _make_ them different. 

His expression firms with that thought, mind made up. He leans over, unzipping his duffel. He doesn't have to dig far to feel his fingers brushing worn in leather, supple and soft, the material broken in years before Dean received it. It feels like family. Like home.

But that was all a lie.

Dean pulls the jacket out to stare at it. It's folded into a flattened square, just waiting for colder weather to be taken out again. Dean remembers when his father gave him the jacket -- the night of his first kill, the first time he'd taken something down _himself,_ not just helping his dad, not just flanking and driving out. It had been a black dog that had left him nursing some fifty two stitches in the wake of the hunt, but that hadn't mattered at the time. It hadn't mattered when his dad looked at him with such pride and then handed the jacket to him and telling him it was his now.

He'd been fifteen. And from then on, he'd been a man.

He still feels the residue of that moment, the way it had made him so full he could barely breathe -- the way he'd thought he'd never be that happy again. But now the memory is tarnished and the jacket is too. It's their dad's coat and there's no way that Sam will ever look at it and not think of the man. There's no way Dean could put it on and not do the same. 

He doesn't care what a man like John Winchester, a man who'd kill his own son, thinks of him.

His face curls up in a grimace, but also with determination, and with that he turns and hurls it into the field on the side of the road. 

“Dean!” Sam yells, shock in his voice. The jacket flutters in the air a little, heavy but fanning out as it tumbles, and it lands somewhere out of sight, crumbled in the long uncut grass.

He sees Sam jog out into the field and he calls to him.

“No. Leave it,” he says firmly. “I don't want it anymore.”

“But--”

“I don't want it, Sam. It--” He curls his lip, displeased. Then he takes a breath. “I'm done with that.”

“Dean...” Sam's looking at him with too much sympathy in his eyes, like this somehow makes up for everything. It's the least of all things though. As if Dean could just walk around wearing that man's coat, as if he could ignore everything their father did to their family.

“We're going to southern California,” he says firmly. “I don't need a coat there.”

With that he reaches down and zips his duffel before picking it up. He starts back down the highway, Castiel walking next to him. It takes a few seconds before he hears the steady slap of Sam running to catch up.

It's still hot. Sweat is still trickling down Dean's face and Dean's neck and the air still feels like a sponge. They're an entire country away from where they want to be and they still don't have a car or enough cash to do more than crash when they make it to the next town.

But at least Dean knows where they're going now.

And he has a little bit less to carry.

\-----

It takes them almost two weeks to cross the country -- which isn't bad, given that they don't have any real transportation.

It's Sam that takes them to the train tracks in Cleveland. Hopping on a freight train is surprisingly easy, the security guards used to hobos and teenaged runaways, not two trained hunters, and Dean's broken into way more elaborate set ups than this. The ride is nice -- peaceful, for once, just the four of them and the rattle of the tracks, the door cracked open to let in air, watching the American landscape pass by.

They make it to St. Louis before the train stops and end up hitchhiking across the seemingly endless expanse of the Midwest. It's the longest leg of the trip, hot and miserable, but by mid August they roll into San Francisco. Then they have a whole new set of problems.

Dean thinks that the hardest part is going to be juggling Stanford. After all, it's an Ivy League school and Sam's been flying in the wind for the last few months, but when they finally have their feet under them and Sam calls up the offices there to make an appointment, the university turns out to be the easy part.

It's not snag free, of course. They spend basically an entire day in the admissions office, Sam cleaned up the best Dean could manage in the men's room, water and paper towels not exactly able to work wonders. They made up a sob story, one that's uncomfortably close to the truth, about an abusive father and running away from home. Dean knows it's stupid but he still feels kind of bad about talking about their dad to a stranger like this, like they're airing the man's dirty laundry in public. Like he's bad mouthing their dad, betraying the family. But it's not like their father doesn't deserve bad mouthing.

It's not the same as a belligerent drunk, though. It's not the same as some son of a bitch who gets his jollies hurting his kids. John wasn't like that. He truly believed that he was saving the world, for whatever crazy reason. Dean hates the pity in the eyes of the people across the desk, hates the way he knows they're thinking of his father, a man who's saved hundreds of lives. A man who fought in a war. 

But he also knows that they're not wrong to think it. At the end of the day, John tried to kill Sam. He tried to kill his own damned kid and that's not forgivable in Dean's book. He just wishes he knew how to let go of the love and respect that lingers. The part of him that's still his father's soldier.

He wishes it was as easy as throwing away the jacket had been.

By the end of the day, though, they've secured that Sam still has a slot for the year after this one -- the only hang up being that he hasn't actually graduated high school.

That turns out to suck more than the college thing.

Because Sam can't get his transcripts from the last school he was in, not without risking alerting their dad. It means that he's going to have to repeat the whole damned year, an entire year of school that Dean knows the kid already aced, all because of their fucked up family. Dean sees the way Sam's expression sets when they're talking to the principal at the local high school, can see Sam's frustration. The kid's a good liar, keeps up with the niceties while he talks, but Dean watches Ruby in the corner, her wings puffing up in agitation, and Castiel walks over to lay his hands on her shoulders, the only comfort Dean can give Sam.

When they walk out of the school Sam kicks the sod as hard as he can, bony frame taut with anger and impotence. Dean can't blame him. It seems most days that Sam can't catch a break.

The only thing Dean can do is try to find them somewhere to stay -- to try and make a life for Sam here, the kind of life he'd always deserved and never gotten.

Of course, that's easier said than done. 

Dean's never really had to deal with accommodation before. Sure, he can check into a motel, but in terms of renting a place, signing a lease, figuring out where they were going to stay... That was always their dad. Dean doesn't know how to settle down, doesn't even know what he's supposed to _look_ for in a permanent residence, and it doesn't help that Palo Alto isn't exactly Bumfuck, Middle America. Not only does everything cost about a billion dollars, housing and real estate exists within a world of haggling and networking that Dean's just not familiar with. He knows how to work down the price on some sawed offs, knows how to negotiate with a Santeria priest to get the supplies he needs. He knows backroom deals and under the table transactions.

He doesn't even know how to start on putting on a suit and walking into a bank and working out a loan.

They're camped out in a ratty motel though, and Dean's managed to save up some hustling money from their travel across the States, but that's not enough to get a mortgage. When he hikes his way into town he's hoping for an opening at the local mechanic or even something at Radioshack. Dean's always been good with his hands, always been good with wires and tools, but beggars can't be choosers.

It kills him, it fucking _kills_ him, but Starbucks is looking for people and they have benefits. If Dean works for them, Sam will be able to go to the doctor. Sam will get his teeth looked after. Sam will have access to Dean's 401k if anything happens. Dean hates it, despises everything from the uniform on down, but Sam needs him to be an adult now. Sam needs a home and that means they need a loan and that means Dean needs a job.

He doesn't have any credit history and he's afraid that any background check is going to turn up suspicious fingerprints, or any other number of awkward to explain details. He knew that he and Sam weren't going to live in the lap of luxury or anything -- they never had -- but he'd been hoping for something a little better than this.

It's early September when Dean leads Sam up the porch steps and into their house. What could be their home.

It's a foreclosed single story with a basement, empty for over a year now and the surrounding area isn't exactly wholesome. They're not too far from the high school, a little further from Stanford but it's not bad by bus. Dean couldn't afford a damned thing closer to the college area of town and the empty flop that no one wanted was one the realtor had been eager to get rid of. Some creative forgery and the fact that Dean put down three thousand in cash had gotten him the property, as well as a fifteen year mortgage.

He could have sworn it looked better when he'd first been there.

Now that he's showing it to Sam, though, all he can see are the leaks, the water stains. All he can see are the holes in the walls and the rat droppings and the chipped, unfinished wood of the porch. It looks like a dump, like a shack not fit for human habitation and Dean had been proud all of five minutes ago. Now he just realizes that this is the best he can get his little brother -- and his best is a slum.

"...I'll work on it," he promises, trying for a smile. 

Sam looks at him dubiously, then back at the house. 

It rains that night.

Everything leaks.

Dean wishes that things got better after that, that it was just one bad slump and then things changed, but luck didn't change for Winchesters. 

Sam enrolls in the local public school and it turns out that his AP credits from the previous attempt at his senior year are wiped as well, and the school here doesn't offer the same ones that he'd taken last time. It's not great, but Dean doesn't think it's the worst thing ever -- Sam disagrees. Sam is pissy and upset, his brow constantly furrowed and anger swimming in his eyes. Dean tries to tell him that it's not so bad and all that earns him is a glare and a slammed door that then promptly falls off of its hinges.

He should have known better.

Sam lives for school, just like Dean lived for the hunt. It's who he is and what he defines his world by and Dean's not blind. School is where Sam sees himself, what he thinks he excels at. Sam's smart, to Dean that's obvious. It doesn't need to be proved. But for Sam, it does. It's what he's hung on to, all these years moving around and hunting. Every bad thing, every fight and every broken bone, it's school that Sam turns to, finds solace in.

And now, when they need it the most, Sam's getting punishment from there too.

It's just yet another piece of shrapnel from the explosion of their father, yet another thing that's become part of the fallout of the worst day of their lives, and Dean hates that it's just another thing he can't do anything about. Another thing he's powerless to fix.

The house, at least, isn't one of those things.

Dean's good with his hands and he sets to work repairing things as soon as he can, convinced that if he can seal up this hole and sand off that stain, somehow things will be better. Like somehow he can build a better life for Sam and patch over the hole that John's left in both of them. It's tiring work, taking from sun up to sun down to get even the simplest tasks done, it seems, and he only has the weekends to work with. Everything that can go wrong does and even the small stuff turns into a big production. He keeps hoping to get something major done, something that'll really make a difference, something that he can say 'Look, Sammy, all better' when his brother gets home from school and make him smile again.

But every day Sam stomps in the door, kicking off mud from his shoes, and all Dean has to show is that he somehow managed to get dinner together.

Three weeks in, Sam starts leaving Ruby at home.

Dean still remembers when he was six and ordered Castiel to stay home -- that Dean wanted to go to school by himself. He'd collapsed half way there, feeling like his skull was going to split in two, and it didn't ease until he heard the frantic beat of wings, and Cas's hands steady on his back.

Sam though? Sam can ask Ruby to go get him a book on the other side of the library, and or even send her home to give Dean a message, neither of them going through the twisting pain that Dean and Castiel experience if pulled too far apart. 

When Dean asks Ruby about it -- how she and Sam can be so far apart -- she just shakes her head.

"It's not us. Not me. It's him. Sam is...special."

As if Dean didn't know just how special his brother was. Smart and serious, the kind of wicked clever that got you into secret government organizations or underground labs. Even ignoring that, Sam's the kind of guy who stops to help little old ladies across the street and not just to get credit with some hot chick that might be watching(like Dean), but just because he feels like he _should._ Sam is smart and good and kind, someone that the world needs and someone who listens to civvies’ sob stories and doesn't have to fake his sympathy. Dean gets that Sam's special.

He just didn't know that he was _special._

Neither Dean nor the demon like her not being with Sam. It means that Sam is vulnerable, unprotected during the day, but Sam is insistent, talking about how he just needs some time alone. Some time to not be a freak. Dean doesn't get it, but even if he did there's nothing he can do about it. Getting Sam to change his mind is like stepping in front of a charging bull and trying to get it to turn its direction: you only wanted to do it if you absolutely had to.

So Ruby stays at home while Sam goes to school and Dean goes out to work, Castiel unavoidably in tow. 

Work is miserable. Dean hates the customers, hates his coworkers, hates the damned _building._ He hates the music that plays over the speakers all day, hates all the college kids with their laptops sitting in the louge area, hates having to write stupid messages on the chalkboard stand outside. He stands there all day, all week, with some stupid smile on his face and does his best not to let it show because he _needs_ this job. Sam needs him to have this job. Sam needs him to man up and get over it, so every morning Dean puts on his uniform and gets on the bus into town and asks people if they want it tall or grande and a little piece of him dies.

And then he does it again.

By the time he gets home in the evening, he has just enough energy to make them dinner and then crash, and the repairs on their barely-standing home slow to a crawl. He devotes as much time as he can, but reality is reality and there's only so many hours in a day.

It feels like Dean is trying so fucking hard and yet he's still failing. He's still failing just like he failed that day, like he failed to see just how far off the deep end their dad had gone.

In the middle of October, the temperatures beginning to dip, Sam decides to take a warm shower and the one thing that Dean didn't even think to look at breaks: the plumbing.

"Fuck!" Sam yells and Dean's exhaustion evaporates. He's running through the house before he can even process the thought, fear churning his stomach to nausea, but when he reaches the bathroom Sam isn't bleeding, isn't dying, isn't being threatened by the specter of their father. A pipe has burst. Right through one of the walls that Dean had spent a week repairing. 

Water is flowing everywhere, gushing down onto the floor and soaking through the dry wall. Sam is standing there with a towel around his waist and cursing up a storm. Dean spits a few himself before jogging to grab his wrench.

"Fuck, fuck," Sam says as Dean wades in, pulling chunks out of the wall to get to the pipe, needing to close it off before water gets everywhere, damaging their already pretty damaged floor. 

"This house," Sam says, shivering and shaking. "This fucking house."

"Go put some clothes on before you catch a cold," Dean says, destroying all the work he put into the wall as he searches for the shut off. He mutters when he sees it's a couple feet further down -- a valve. He has to punch even more holes in the drywall to reach it and all the while Sam is bitching.

"It's a freaking deathtrap, Dean. Nothing _works."_

"It just--" Dean grunts, stretching his arm through the wall to get to the valve. He abandons the wrench on the floor, not needing it as he gets his hands around the little wheel. "Just needs a little work."

"A _little?_ It barely has a roof. We've stayed in trailers that're better than this. It's a moneypit. I don't even know why we bought it."

"It's fine, Sam. I'll fix it, I promise. I just--" Dean feels his fingers slip, cold with the water and numb. The valve is old and rusty, just like everything else in the house. He growls and wraps his fingers tight around it and _yanks_ \-- And the water cuts off at the same moment some jagged spike of metal slices through the meat of Dean's hand.

"Fuck!" he yells, jerking his arm back immediately, clasping it against his chest. The pain is bright through the semi-numbness of the cold, just making the sensation worse, and Dean doesn't know what to fucking do any more. It feels like they're in this pit, this bottomless fucking hole and Dean knows it's his job to get them out but he _doesn't know how._ It feels like everything he's doing isn't nearly enough and he's giving it all he has.

And all he has isn't anywhere even near enough.

It's a constant and painful reminder that he's always going to fall too short. 

"Dean--" Sam says, voice quieter.

"I'm trying Sam. Okay? I'm _trying,"_ he says, like that's some excuse. Like that's going to make up for all of this.

Like Dean's pathetic attempts are even close to what Sam deserves after everything that happened. After his own damned father tried to kill him. The world keeps shitting on Sam and Dean tries to make it better, tries to make it even a little okay, but he's just not up to the task. The truth of it sits bitter in the back of Dean's mouth.

He looks up, though, when he feels hands sliding over his own. He opens his pain clenched eyes to see slender fingers, a little pale with cold, cupping his own work worn ones, and he looks up, Sam still standing there with a towel around his waist, and his gaze fixed on Dean's injury. He lets go only to pull the first aid box out from under the sink, pulling out gauze and some bandages, and Dean stands there in the water, watching as Sammy wraps the wound.

When he looks up, his little brother's brow is pinched, watching him.

"...you okay?" he asks.

Dean doesn't even know how to respond.

He looks down at his hand, at the faint specks of blood seeping through and his brow furrows.

"Are you alright?" Sam tries again.

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean manages to reply, reassurance there automatic. "Yeah, I'm alright."

"Dean..." Sam's voice is softer, lower, and one long hand comes up to touch Dean's forearm. Dean hasn't even had time to change out of his work clothes. He's standing there, soaking wet and bleeding in his ruined bathroom, and he just... He doesn't know how he's going to fix this.

"...I'm sorry, Sammy," he says, and he's ashamed that his breath hitches. "I'm so fucking sorry, I-- ...Fuck." 

He lifts his good hand, rubbing over his eyes and forehead.

"...I really wanted something better for you." The words tremble and just the thought makes his chest feel tight, and isn't this just the last thing that Sam needs: his brother, the only person he has left, falling apart.

It feels like another failure in a line of a million and Dean's never felt lower. Never felt like a worse damned provider. He thought that he could be good at this, thought that he could fix _this,_ at least, if not their lives. Dean couldn't fix their family but he thought he could at least fix a damned house. Their dad let Sam down and now Dean's letting him down too.

"I'm sorry," Sam says, and that's not what Dean's expecting. He raises his head, looking at his little brother, baffled.

"I'm sorry I've been such a brat," Sam continues, and he's not looking at Dean. There's pain on his expression, in his eyes, and this is the last thing Dean wanted to do. He doesn't want to make Sam feel guilt to make him shoulder anything else.

"Sammy, no--"

"I have been. I just--" Sam shuts his eyes -- tight. Hurting. "Dad tried to kill me, Dean. He-- ...I don't know what I am. _Who_ I am. And...whatever it is, it's bad enough that my own father thinks I'm better off dead. I just--"

"It's not your fault, Sam."

"And it's not _yours_ either, but I--" Sam opens his eyes, looking up at Dean slowly. "I couldn't take it out on Dad so I've been taking it out on you instead. I'm sorry. You've done all of this for me. You've been...amazing. And I'm sorry. It's not your fault what happened."

"Sam, you don't need to apologize to me," Dean says, feeling almost uncomfortable with it. "What happened-- ... _No one_ would be okay after that. It's okay."

"It's really not."

"You're just a kid."

"So are _you."_

Dean stops at that, and he can feel the surprise on his own features. He hasn't been a kid in a long time. Long before them leaving Dad. Long before his eighteenth birthday. Dean was a kid once, he remembers it. But for the last eighteen years he's been Sam's guardian, Sam's parent, Sam's brother and Dad's second. He doesn't feel like a kid at all.

But he's also never felt as lost as he does now.

"I just--" Sam starts, after the silence lingers too long. "Some days...I don't even know what to do. I'm just so... _angry._ All the time. And I can't-- I can't--"

"Dude," Dean interrupts, wanting to head this off, not blaming Sam, not even a little. He shakes his head. "You're dealing with-- Fuck you're dealing with so much. Way more than someone your age should have to deal with."

 _"So are you,"_ Sam says again, emphatic but quiet. He looks too close to the surface, too earnest staring into Dean's eyes, and Dean can remember the last few months. He remembers walking and hitchhiking everywhere, crashing wherever and whenever they could. He remembers seeing Sam worn down, Sam carrying this abscess around inside of him and the look in Sam's eyes, like he'd been fundamentally changed. Like the kid that Dean had gone to sleep holding the night before their father came home was gone forever, changed irrevocably.

"I just want to help you," Dean admits pathetically. He should be better than this, bigger than this. He should be able to do these things for Sam, give Sam the kind of life his kid brother deserves, but all he has right now is a house that's falling apart and a bunch of empty promises. 

Dean doesn't know what kind of cosmic joke it was, which idiot upstairs thought it'd be good to put a kid like Sam, someone so _smart,_ so _special,_ into this fucking family.

But Sam's shoulders slump and he looks down at the pool of water on the bathroom floor.

"I wish I knew how to be helped," he says, with a defeated little shrug. He looks up though, eyes drifting up to Dean's, some kind of fragile hope in the pinch of his brow. "But just-- ...Don't give up. I'll be better. I swear. Just don't--don't give up on me, okay...?"

At that Dean shakes his head, like he can shake it all away. He wishes he could have given Sam the world, but the truth is that he can't. He can't magically fix the house, can't fix things for Sam at school. He can't fix what their father tried to do.

But he still has Sam.

And Sam has him.

"Told you -- you don't need to apologize to me," he says, stepping forward. His feet make slashes in the water as he moves closer to Sam, instinctively wanting to reach out, to hold. He keeps thinking that somehow that'll make this better. That he can fix this with duct tape and jokes, put him in a headlock and wrestle around like they used to when they were younger. 

Sam looks down, his shoulders hunched and frame wound so tight. Dean can see his delicate, scholar's hands twisted into fists.

"Sam..." Dean says, reaching out. His hand buries in Sam's long hair, intending to ruffle through the strands, but instead he lets them slip through his fingers, lets the feel of them pass over his palm. It's wrong and he knows he shouldn't do it, shouldn't touch like this, but before he can withdraw Sam looks up at him, eyes pleading and Dean feels his brother's hands come up to clench in Dean's shirt, against his chest.

"Please," Sam says. "I don't want to _lose_ you."

Dean thinks back to the night before their dad came home, remembers Sam admitting much the same then. Dean had pulled his brother close despite his better instincts, despite the same voice in his head that told him he shouldn't. And he does it again now, can't not when Sam is there in front of him, asking.

Dean folds his arms around Sam, pulls him close, and it feels _good._ It feels good to be needed, to be wanted, and Dean knows he's a selfish bastard but god it means the world to hear it. To have Sam need him like he needs Sam.

"Never gonna lose me, Sammy," he promises for a second time, meaning it just as much as he had the first. There's not a doubt in his head, not even a question.

Their house has a lot of holes in it, is damn near falling apart in places. They're trying to hold things together with the grip of their fingers and Dean wishes that he could give Sam the world on a silver plate.

Dean won't fall apart. Sam needs him too much.

\-----

The world doesn't turn around over night. It would be nice if that was the way that things worked but Dean knows he's not going to be winning the lottery and there's no rich uncle going to be randomly leaving them his fortune.

Reality is reality and in the real world, their pipes are busted and the lights flicker and Dean spends half the night trying to mop up the mess in the bathroom before it does even _more_ damage to the underlying wood.

But it is, at least, he thinks, he _hopes,_ the turning point.

Starbucks still sucks. He stills feels like little pieces of him rot and fall off when he walks through the door every morning, still feels his freaking soul leaving his body when he stands behind the counter and takes orders with a smile that makes him feel made of plastic.

He's still got a shit fuck ton to do on the house and he still doesn't know where to start and him and Sam's future is still hella uncertain, but it's not all bad. 

Sam's trying. Dean can tell. He can't blame the kid. Dean has no delusions -- Sam's no saint. In fact, he could be a little shit a lot of the time, before. But this wasn't that. This wasn't Sam being a brat.

This was Sam being an eighteen year old kid trying to deal with the memory of his own father trying to kill him.

And Dean is family. The only family Sam has to take this out on, the only one he can yell at. John's the one that deserves the brunt of it, but Dean carries his own share, and he understands why Sam had acted the way he did. He understands that there's no easy way for a teenager to deal with this. Dean's twenty two and _not_ the one that was shot at and _his_ brain practically collapses under the pressure.

So it's not Sam's fault. But after the night the pipes burst, Dean can tell that Sam really is trying. He even cooks dinner sometimes, to try and alleviate Dean of some responsibility. Problem is, it's cute and all, but Sam's a horrible cook. He even burns coffee and undercooks ramen. The burnt-outside-frozen-on-the-inside lasagna he "makes" is out of the box and still inedible and the one night he tries to actually cook from scratch they end up having to throw out a good chunk of their groceries -- _not_ a good thing, living on the kind of budget they are.

But it means something that Sam's trying.

Dean makes it clear that he'll be taking back over making dinner -- Sam's allowed to make things like sandwiches. And bowls of goldfish crackers. Dean's not sure how someone who can talk about the heat death of the universe can't understand how to cook Kraft macaroni and cheese but them's the breaks. Besides, laundry's always been Sammy's job. It feels almost a little good to get back to routine. It feels like a little piece of normal in the storm and Dean doesn't think they need too many reminders of "home" -- or what came close to the idea of home, for them -- but just a few pieces. Just a few little pieces to help them find their feet.

Dean manages to keep his weekends free. It's not too hard. Most of the other employees are in school of some kind, so the fact that Dean can work all week is a plus. Having the weekends off means he gets as much time with Sam as possible. As much as Dean would like to just collapse on their ratty Goodwill couch and sleep the afternoons away, it's the only time he has to work on the house. That _they_ have to work on the house, and that's better than anything else.

One week in early October they spend the whole damn weekend up on the roof. They patch the whole thing, filling in the smaller holes with silicon and putting boards over the bigger ones. Shingles, as it turns out, are fucking expensive and weigh a ton, but by the time they're done their roof actually keeps rain out. Sam looks tired but so fucking pleased, like patching a roof could fix all the trouble in his life.

The next on the list is the plumbing, taking down half the damned drywall and buying enough PVC to build a whole new house out of it. Sam has a book he checked out from the library and it seems that while his big brain boggles over things like defrosting meat, he can figure the shit out of plumbing and electrical. It's not fun, but between the two of them it's not so bad. And having Sam having his back...

Well, that's worth a lot. 

So the world doesn't right itself overnight. But it at least turns around.

"You're doing that wrong," Ruby says, and Dean immediately takes back whatever positivity he had.

"You wanna do it?" he demands, looking over his shoulder at her. The air handler is open in front of him, wires everywhere. He'd kind of been hoping it'd be similar to wiring a car. 

It wasn't.

"No," the demon responds with a cheeky smile, shrugging her shoulders and Dean scowls.

It's a Monday and Dean happens to have the day off. Sam left Ruby at home again, much to the consternation of both Dean and the demon, but the kid was obstinate and fighting with him was pretty much the last thing Dean wanted to do at the moment. He'd figured he'd get a head start on installing the central heating while Sam was gone, but it was looking like Sam and a bunch of complex as shit diagrams were going to be necessary.

Dean's pretty good with electronics, can guess his way around a lot. It's just that this feels a little...out of his league.

"The hell do demons know about duct work anyway?" Dean grouses, turning back to the mess of wires and breakers. He crosses his arms over his chest. "You do a lot of air conditioning in Hell?"

"How else are we supposed to enjoy all the fornicating?" Ruby responds and Dean hears the flutter of her wings. She lands beside him, shoulder knocking with his, forcing him out of the way a bit. She smirks at him and goes into the open air handler, nimble fingers pulling out some cables he's kinked. The coil is sitting over in the space that will, hopefully, one day, be occupied by a washing machine.

Ruby's wings vanish like smoke and she crawls up to try and hook the damned thing into the vent system.

With her wings gone, it's impossible not to notice how tiny she is. She's shorter than him by like a freaking foot and that still weirds him out. When he first met her he came up to her _knees._ He's known her forever, since before he turned four and it's weird how many people she's been in his life. It's not the same with Cas. Cas is him. Dean's had the exact same relationship with him all his life.

Ruby, though, is this other presence, something like a mother and a big sister and a little sister all in one. Something like a friend and a bully at the same time. Despite her sometimes asshole-ishness, she cares; she just didn't like people to think it.

He remembers that she was the only person, after his mom, to kiss his scraped knees.

She's a demon and some days she and Dean don't get along, too alike for their own good, but she's family. And that's how family is. It sits sour in Dean's stomach when he realizes he doesn't include his father in that equation anymore. Family doesn't do what he did.

Dean can never say it to him, say it to his face, but he thinks it would stick a thorn in John Winchester's side something fierce to be told that a demon had more loyalty to their family than he did.

But it's true. And it's all of three hours later, just before lunch, that Ruby once again proves her fidelity.

Dean had been down in the guts of the house, screwing the front of the air handler shut, he and Ruby having finished their work and the demon having vanished back upstairs.

The house had been quiet when he'd come up from the basement. There'd been nothing to hide the whisper of voices, but the door at the end of the hallway, the door to Sammy's room, only barely open, makes it almost inaudible. If Dean weren't a hunter used to using his ears to live, he'd never have picked it up.

"It's cruel." Her voice is a hushed whisper and Dean is instantly aware that he's not supposed to be hearing this. 

It's not often that he and Sam's guardians talk to each other. For the most part, Castiel sticks by Dean and Ruby sticks by Sam and Sam and Dean stick together. Which is why Dean really wants to hear this, this whatever it is that's going on.

He sneaks up to the door, toe-to-heel with each step, which he rolls his eyes at. Like the fact that he and Cas are _preternaturally bound_ isn't going to factor more into the equation than the noise his freakin' feet make. 

Thankfully, it seems like the angel is distracted, because he doesn't hear or sense Dean, even as Dean extends his neck, peering through the crack in the door. It's Sammy's room so the desk cluttered with Sam's notes and books while the bed's made tight enough to bounce a quarter off -- Ruby and Cas are on the other side of the door from him, invisible.

"It is how it has always been," Castiel replies, monotone.

"That's not a reason," Ruby hisses.

"You knew what you were getting into when you accepted. You _did_ accept, didn't you?" Cas sounds kind of judgy there -- Dean would know, he's had that tone turned on him more than once. "Perhaps that isn't how _your_ people do it."

"Get off your high horse," Ruby responds quickly, a little louder, the anger getting to her. Then, she quiets again, sounding regretful. "I accepted. There's no way you refuse something like this. You _know_ that."

There's a pause then and Dean wishes he could push the door open a little bit, look around the edge of it and see the two of them, see whatever it is that's on their faces. This is something new, something different, and despite his belief that ignorance is bliss, he can't help but be curious. But he's lucky that he hasn't been noticed already. He can't push it.

"...Yes, I know," Cas finally replies, softer, or as soft as he ever gets. "It is an honor." There's a shuffle of wings, the tap of something being set down, like restless hands fiddling with whatever they can find. "One you would do well not to forget."

"I haven't forgotten. Just because I wanted this, just because I accepted, doesn't mean I can't question it. Haven't _you_ questioned it? Doesn't he mean anything to you?"

"He is my duty. Not all of us are as swayed by our emotions as you are. Sam isn't your puppy. He isn't your pet. And it isn't my place to question."

There's a rush of air and a thump, enough that Dean jumps back from the door a little, thinking he's been discovered. But the seconds tick by and nothing happens, the door only barely moving from the air stirred up. When Ruby speaks again her voice is in a different location, somewhere closer to the wall, and Dean realizes the demon shoved Cas up against it.

"Don't you dare." He can hear the anger in Ruby's voice now, rumbling and sharp. "Don't you call him anything like that -- don't you realize of whom you speak?"

"Don't _you?"_

There's a quiet then and Dean's gut is churning. He hates this. He hates every moment he's ever thinking of his little brother as less than human. It feels undeniable, feels unavoidable, after everything that's happened, but it's _Sam._ Just thinking it feels like a betrayal. Dean knows Sam. Believes in Sam.

Dean raised Sam. And Dean knows that Sam is going to save them all.

He can hear Ruby stepping back.

"I accepted my place,” she says. “And my duty. But that doesn't make me a slave. I still have a mind of my own and this feels... _wrong._ It feels cruel. Our first loyalty goes to them."

"Our first loyalty goes to our _people._ Both of whom have worked for thousands of years to maintain this balance. And you would seek to upset it just to, what? Appease some sense of guilt?"

"I would seek the _truth._ If the truth upsets the balance then nothing was balanced to begin with-- _Cas._ You know this is wrong. You _know_ it. I see it in your eyes. I don't know why you hold yourself apart from us. We're--"

Ruby cuts off, goes quiet, but Dean wishes she would finish. It takes him a second to realize he's holding his breath.

"What?" Cas asks, presses. Dean can hear the shuffle of him straightening his trenchcoat. "Special? Different? We are what we are. This is the duty that will set us apart. It the achievement of our lives. Nothing else matters."

"...family," Ruby finishes, disappointment evident in her tone. "We're family. And I don't care what you say... It doesn't _feel right._ And if they come for him... He isn't my 'duty.' He's one I will follow. He comes first, not them. I don't care what anyone else says and you can deny it all you want but you're the same. You _have_ to be. We shouldn't keep them in the dark."

Dean backs up when he sees Ruby move for the door, but just through the crack he can make out Castiel's hand, reaching out and snapping around Ruby's wrist, halting her progress.

"You cannot tell them. You have no idea what it would do."

Ruby is silent.

"Ruby," the angel says, low and serious. "It could undo everything. It could _awaken--"_

"I won't tell him," she responds finally, cutting him off, her tone clipped. "But I will, if it comes to it."

Dean doesn't wait around after that, not wanting to get caught out eavesdropping, though hiding from them seems stupid. Part of him insists he barge in and ask them what the hell they're talking about. Contrary to what Sam thinks, Dean doesn't _like_ being left in the dark -- it's just that it can be safer sometimes.

Sometimes knowing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Dean thinks of his father's face that morning, the way he looked _knowing_ something, and moves into the kitchen, setting the kettle on the stove, feeling the need for coffee, and it seems like something to do with his hands. Something to make it look like he wasn't lurking just outside a door.

Dean wants to know. He wants to demand answers and not be the one left out of the loop. He ignored their father, ignored all the warning signs for so long and he knows how that ended up. All the same, 'awaken' isn't good. 'Awaken' isn't something he wants to invoke, even though he doesn't know who or what would wake up, or where. Or what it would have to do with them.

He just gets the feeling that knowing that might be the same as finding out.

So he keeps his mouth shut. He keeps his mouth shut and does his damned job and decides to get a head start on dinner. When Sam gets home Dean doesn't mention it. He doesn't bring it up with Ruby or Cas either. 

The conversation stays with him, though -- weighs on his mind and he can feel it bouncing around inside there.

With all the other things he has to worry about, it has good company.

\-----

Rainy autumn passes into rainy winter.

Dean had thought that the rain would let up eventually, but all through November the drizzle kept up. The weather wasn't cold but it was cool enough to be miserable, especially walking through the wet to get to his bus stop.

He ended up jogging over to the Goodwill, shelling out a few bucks to get him and Sam some rain coats. They still didn't have a car, Sam getting to school by bus and Dean just hoofing it when the city bus couldn't get him where he needed to, and the last thing he wanted was Sam shivering in some unheated school bus. The last thing he needed was people talking about the care Sam was getting, even if he was eighteen. Their identities here were skin deep. Brush the surface and people would see that things weren't what they were meant to be.

And even all of that aside, it wasn't like Dean could afford downtime for a cold.

By the time that Christmas was approaching, Dean was damned tired of the wet.

Sam liked the rain. Always had. Dean thinks it's cause it fits his emo little headspace. Sam does things like wandering around under an umbrella, kicking up puddles with his feet, Ruby's feathers fluffing up as she tries to flick the water off. Dean's always been more of a warm weather person. He has pretty fond memories of Florida beaches and string bikinis. 

All the same, Dean still shuffles up in the morning, shivering in his reluctance to get out of bed, and gets ready for work. They finally have the plumbing working right and the hot shower is pretty much the only thing that keeps him alive, most days. The house is looking better, looking more put together, if still a little scrappy. Yeah, there's huge sections of the dry wall missing and everything needs a new coat of paint and the furniture is something like fifth hand, but it's not bad. It's beginning to feel almost a little bit like home.

And then Dean finds the article in the newspaper.

It's not even like he reads the newspaper that often. He doesn't have a lot of free time on his hands. It's just that he's on his break from work, a blessed fifteen minutes where he doesn't have to stand around and smile at people, and he leans back in a chair for a moment, picking up the local rag. It's mostly uninteresting stuff, this and that, stupid pretty college bullshit. It's not like there's ground breaking news in a college town. It's just something to read.

Problem is, Dean was raised to find these kinds of things. His eyes seek out the abnormal. His brain latches on to the coincidences. 

And the story about a bunch of weird accidents in the library is a hunt. There's no doubt about it. Dean doesn't even have to debate. If it were six months ago and they were still with their dad, it would have been more than enough to get them into research mode. It would be their next job.

And it's right around the corner.

Hell, Dean walks one block over from the library every day. He's never gone inside, because even if he _had_ free time he wouldn't be spending it in the the _library_ (unless the librarian was like...really hot), but he knows Sam's gone to it more than once. The first thought that pops into his head is that he should ask Sam about it when he gets home, see if his brother's ever noticed something strange.

That's when Dean has to shake himself.

He didn't come here to hunt. He came here to get Sammy _away_ from that. There's no obsessed father driving them anymore, no need to look for the strange and the obscene around every corner. They're living a normal life, just like Sam always wanted. Dean throws the paper back down on the table and stands up, putting it out of his mind. They're out. Someone else can handle it.

He goes back behind the counter, puts back on his stupid apron and his stupid smile and gets back to taking orders. And every minute he's remembering that once upon a time he used to hunt ghosts.

It dogs his steps, haunts his thoughts, and that night he lays in his bed, looking up at the water-stained ceiling, hands behind his head.

It's not like he doesn't know what kind of loser he looks like. A high school drop out with no prospects, working day and night at a Starbucks because nowhere else will have him. He's checked in at the local mechanic a few times since they moved in, but Dean doesn't have any references, doesn't have an employment history. It doesn't matter that he's good with cars -- he can't _prove_ it and people aren't accustomed to hiring on the hope that someone turns out to be competent. 

The world doesn't run on IOUs and credit card fraud. Dean has skills, but being out of the game, trying to live as a civvie, has just driven home to him how useless those skills are in the real world. He can build an EMF meter out of an old walkman, can hit a moving mark from fifty yards. He knows two Latin exorcisms by heart and one Sumerian and he knows without even having to look it up how to kill a red cap. He's damned good at being a hunter.

And crap at being anything else.

It's yet another thing he can blame his dad for and the recriminations wander through his head during the day: _why didn't you teach me how to build a resume? Why didn't you teach me how to file my taxes? Why didn't you tell me how to manage a mortgage?_

Dean knows how to run scams and cons but he doesn't know how to be a functional adult. His failings get driven home to him every day, going in to work and seeing people with ambition, listening to his younger co-workers talk about the colleges they're applying to, or taking the order of some guy in a suit who probably makes more in a day than Dean does all month.

Dean used to think of himself as the cool one. He was the mysterious guy with the nice car and the leather jacket, the guy that appeared out of nowhere, didn't give a crap, and vanished just as quick.

Turns out, in this world, the world of nine-to-fives and hi-honey-I'm-homes, Dean's the freak. Dean's the loser.

And he feels it every day.

That's the only excuse he has, a week later, when he's stumbling back home, blood oozing from his side and his sawed off dangling from one hand. 

It had happened in a fit of desperation. A bad day, an irate customer calling him an idiot, a pathetic corporate paycheck that came in lower than he'd expected and the realization that this was it, this was his life, and he just couldn't help it. He'd gone down into the basement, unlocked their chest of weapons, the few they'd picked up since leaving their father, and ran off half cocked, determined to prove that he had worth. That he was the badass he remembered himself to be.

Prove to _who_ he didn't know. It had just seemed like it was the only thing he could do at the time.

"I can carry you," Cas offers, fluttering around him, the angel's nerves only making it worse. He appreciates the worry, but he's dizzy with blood loss and a concussion, and having someone buzzing around the edges of his vision wasn't helping.

He gives Castiel an offended look.

"Dude, you're not _carrying_ me."

"You look as if you might collapse. It would be prudent--"

"Screw prudent. I got myself into this. I'll get myself out." He pauses, then gives the angel a significant look. "And Sammy doesn't need to know."

Castiel looks dubious.

"Dean," he says. "Your brother is quite intelligent. I believe he will notice that your insides are falling out."

"They're not _falling out._ Don't be a drama queen." Dean's tempted to roll his eyes, but the world rolls for him instead and he goes stumbling to the side, almost crashing into a fence post. He grunts when he impacts Cas instead, feeling the down of white feathers against him. 

"I'm fine," he manages to grunt, but he takes a breath before shoving off of the angel and continuing his shambling walk home. Each step sends a stitch up his side, wincing as he imagines flesh tearing, the hole worsening. He got rid of the poltergeist, but now he's wondering if maybe the poltergeist got rid of him too.

The two mile walk from work to their house has never been more agonizing, every step small and pained, every inch such a minor victory that it doesn't seem worth celebrating. When he makes it around the bend he doesn't feel relief. All he feels is the despair that he still has half a mile to go.

Halfway there, it begins to rain again.

The ground is already wet from earlier in the day and the water runs into storm drains, drops plinking into puddles. Dean reaches out with the hand _not_ holding his side together, and braces himself against the fence. When he finally sees the warm glow of their home he thinks it's never looked more beautiful. A broken down old thing, more about it wrong than right, but in that moment it looks like a goddamned palace.

He makes it halfway up the path to the door, halfway up the front yard, when he feels the world spin, grey out at the edges. He doesn't remember collapsing into the sodden grass. He only remembers the cold.

When he manages to open his eyes again, he can hear the crackle of fire on wood. The fireplace had been old but functional, just needed a cleaning in fact, the most intact part of their house. Sammy's been going nuts on it, building a fire almost every damned night recently, and the thought makes Dean smile a little before he realizes he doesn't remember how he got here.

Dean turns his head, eyes barely focusing on the mantle and seeing the flames, low and licking at the wood Sam picked up from one of the neighbors after they'd had some trees cut. Dean blinks sleepily and his brain still feels turned off, just lies there staring, until he sees a head of chestnut hair bob next to him.

"Sammy...?" he murmurs, glancing down. He finds himself shirtless, laid up on their couch, his head pressed back against a pillow. From this perspective he can see the mess of his chest, all blue and black and yellow, bruises browning on his skin, underscoring all the scratches and scrapes. He looks like an ugly canvas, painted by an ugly man, and Dean groans.

"Just stay still," he hears Sam say, and Dean blinks again, turning to try and make his brother out.

Sam is crouched down next to him, feet on the floor and one knee as well, and the kid isn't looking at him. He's looking straight at Dean's middle, a look of complete concentration there. It takes Dean another second or two to see the needle.

"Sam...?" he asks again and then the fog begins to clear. He tries to sit up. "The hell're you doing?"

"What part of 'stay still' don't you get?" Sam responds testily, reaching up and pushing Dean's shoulder back down to the couch. 

Dean lets out an 'oof', more from the motion than any pain. He can't really feel anything from his ribs down and that sudden realization freaks him out.

"Sammy, fuck, Sammy I can't feel anything--"

"I know, stay still. I gave you a local."

"The _hell'd_ you get a local from?"

"The first aid kit."

"You've been _stocking_ the first aid kit?"

"Was always my job before," Sam replies, shrugging as he leans in and sews another stitch. "I didn't want to be caught off guard if anything happened." He glances up at Dean, giving him a dirty look. "And given that I found you bleeding out, face down in the rain an hour ago, I'm really glad I did. Now..."

He pushes himself up straighter, looking Dean right in the eye before continuing.

"Just lay there and be quiet and let me...put you back together again."

Dean stares at him, his mind still woozy and a little out of it and it takes him a moment to process. Before he knows it he's nodding, accepting, totally forgetting that _he's_ the big brother, thank you very much. He'll give the orders.

Instead he obeys. He puts his head back against the couch cushion and shuts his eyes, letting out a long breath as the feeling of warm exhaustion rushes over him. Every muscle sort of aches, every joint feeling banged up and his pants are wet and uncomfortable on top of all that, but he's warm and inside and it feels good. Way better than his agonizing shamble down the street.

It occurs to him, through the fog in his head, that he's extremely lucky that no one saw him.

Dean doesn't know how much time passes between then and when Sam speaks again.

"...You went hunting, didn't you?" 

The question is low -- quiet enough that Dean, half awake and half asleep, only just hears it. There's no tone to it. It's not recriminating and that makes Dean wonder, makes his brow furrow, and he feels like they should be about to get into it. It feels like the prelude to a fight.

"I--" he starts, knowing he's gotta get himself out in front, gotta start with the reasons, the excuses, the whatevers, quick, because Sam's freaky fast with words and it won't be long until Sam is talking him into a corner.

"I figured you would," Sam says, even softer, when Dean can't come up with anything else.

Dean winces. Sam doesn't need to say it. He's disappointed.

"...M'sorry," Dean mumbles, knowing that isn't even half of enough. What would have happened if he hadn't dodged at the last minute? What if he'd taken the blow full on? He'd have ended up bleeding out in that damned library, Cas unable to go for help and Sam would have had to hear from the police the next morning, after spending the whole night up wondering where Dean was. What had happened. What had gone wrong.

And then Sam would have been alone. Eighteen years old and no family, not chance at school or a future, taking on Dean's debts and giving up his dreams to work some half assed job he's too good for.

There's no other word for it. Dean had been selfish. 

He'd needed the hunt, needed the feel of it, and he'd gone charging in, wanting to feel like the big man again, regardless of the fact that he'd been thinking like a self-centered child. He couldn't do that anymore. He can't just run off into the night on spit and a prayer, ready to throw himself into any danger. He has responsibilities. He has Sam.

"It's just--" He hears himself continue, searching for cheap excuses. Like he can explain this away. "It's that job, Sammy. It's this house. It's--Fuck. I used to be this _guy,_ you know? I used to be this guy that could...hunt down a werewolf. That could take out a blackdog. I was a guy who exorcised _demons_ and now I'm standing around asking people if they want whip or not. I used to hunt ghosts and now I wear an apron and a name tag and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to keep this house together and look after you and insurance and, fuck, we don't have a _car--_ cell phones--"

"Dean," Sam says.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Sammy. Dad never told me--" He presses his eyes tight shut, hating how the concussion knocks any filter right out of him, and his mouth just keeps moving. "Fuck, he never told me how to do _any_ of this."

"It's okay," Sam says quietly, no blame there.

Dean opens his eyes, surprised, and he turns his head to look at his brother. He expects to see the lie, expects to see the disappointment, if nothing else, but Sam's just looking at him. His eyelids are dipped a little low, looking at Dean with the fire burning behind him, sending shadows across Sam's face.

"...It's not okay," Dean replies. "I was a fucking idiot."

"Well, I'm not going to argue _there,"_ Sam teases, one side of his mouth quirking up. Then he goes a little more serious. "Dean... If you want to hunt, you gotta tell me. If you ever go off on a hunt...you need to take me with you."

And those are just about the last words that Dean expects to hear.

"I thought you didn’t want to hunt. I thought you _hated_ it--"

"I do."

"But--"

"It’s not all about me, Dean. If you need this then you need it. You gave me what I needed here, I can do the same for you." Sam pauses then, turning back to a bowl on the wood floor. There a milky amber fluid in it and a rag and Dean can smell the iodine scent. Sam picks up the rag and rings it out, bringing it up to dab at Dean's wound and Dean automatically flinches, even though he's numbed up. It's sense memory, him and iodine.

"You don't have to, Sam," he says.

"If _you_ have to then _I_ have to. Dean, it's not-- I don't have to _take_ all the time. I don't always have to be the little brother. I get that you're always going to be the big brother, I do. But you do things you don't want to for me. That's just what--... That's _family._ I'm not saying that we have no boundaries, I'm just saying... It doesn't always have to be you giving up while I get whatever I want."

Dean frowns a little at that and he totally blames the concussion for what he does next. He lifts one arm, hand reaching out, and with a little fumbling inaccuracy, he manages to touch Sam's cheek, his chin. Sam's eyes, his expression, goes softer, almost wistful.

"...You don't get whatever you want," Dean fumbles out. "You get the shit end of the stick, Sam. Something-- ...Something awful happened and fuck-- Sam, you deserve to get whatever you want for a bit."

"What if what I want is you to be happy too?" Sam replies instantly, without pause, and damn the little shit, always too quick with that big brain of his, words always fast, better for him than for Dean. 

Dean stumbles around like a one legged dog trying to race a gazelle in discussions like these.

"I'm--" he tries to respond, tries to come up with the right response to that. "I--"

"You should quit your job." And there Sam goes again. Lobbing him balls there's just no way he's gonna manage to hit.

"I-- What?"

"You should quit. You're miserable there. _Any_ one can see that you're miserable there."

"Sam, I can't just-- Are you insane? It doesn't matter if I'm miserable or not. We don't have the luxury of dream chasing here, Sammy. We need _food_ on the freaking table and we need _health insurance_ and-- This isn't the American Dream. Sometimes you gotta just dig in and do what you gotta do."

"And where did that get us before?" Sam demands, voice still gentle but Dean's no fool. He knows how determined his little brother can get. "Where did it get us when Dad was saying to keep our heads down? When we just had to buckle down and accept what's what? I know we need money, Dean. But we've gone without before. We'll make do."

"It's not that _easy--"_

"It really is." Sam sits back on his haunches. "We can get you your GED. I can help you with your resume. You don't have to do all this _alone."_ He pauses, smiles a little, and it's strangely...bashful, Sam's eyes darting away. "...But it means a lot to me to watch you try."

"Sam..." Dean's hand drops down, falling from Sam's jaw to his sternum, to that thin plate of bone in the center of Sam's skinny chest.

Sam looks up, eyes warmer than the fire, and he leans in.

Dean's brow furrows, his mind not keeping up, too much in too many directions and still not all there, but Sam is getting closer, growing large in the field of Dean's vision. It's more instinct than impetus that makes him close his eyes, only a second before Sam's lips press to his own.

It feels good.

It feels soft and heated. It isn't deep, isn't hot and heavy, though Sam's lips are moving against his own. Dean responds, automatic and without thought, the sensation enough to trigger muscle memory, feeling the slip of Sam's tongue against the inside of his upper lip, something so strange and specific and alive. It's just a little wet, just a little, and Dean leans in before he remembers that he's supposed to lean away.

He pulls back, almost jerks before he remembers his stitches, the numbness wearing away now.

"Sam, no--"

"Tell me you don't want it," Sam replies softly. His response is quick, immediate, but Dean can hear the tremble there, the fear. "Tell me it's because you don't want it and I _swear_ I'll drop it."

Dean swallows hard. He knows he should just say that he doesn't. He should just tell Sam those words, call his bluff and try to push it away. It's the right thing to do in the face of something incredibly wrong. And Dean doesn't know if it's the concussion or the fire or the blood loss or just plain stupidity that his mouth just works soundlessly.

"Because you gotta know, Dean," Sam continues, pressing, always pressing. "I'd never do anything to hurt you and if-- If you need more time, I can wait. I will. I'll wait for however long you need--"

Dean splutters at that, his emotions swinging wildly from recrimination to disbelief, almost offense.

 _"You'll_ wait for _me?"_

"If you need me to."

"Sam, you're just a kid!"

"So?"

"So--...So _I'm_ the one that should be waiting on you!" Somehow his brain skips out on the part where neither of them should be waiting on each other. Not for this.

"Well, get on that then," Sam replies. He wraps his arms around his knees, still squatting there on the floor. "Things are shitty, Dean. They're _always_ shitty. It's not like this is new. We've always been fighting an uphill battle and I just-- I'm tired of waiting for things to get better. Why do you have to work at a job you hate? Why do you have to give up everything you want? Why do we have to pretend this isn't happening when it so obviously _is?"_

Sam sighs, shutting his eyes. He continues.

"I don't know when it started because...because I don't think it ever _started._ It just always was." Sam breathes out. "When we were kids it wasn't so bad because it was just...how I felt about you. But now that we're older there's all the other stuff but I don't think-- I mean. Why try to deny it? Why're we fighting this so hard? There's no dad here anymore, Dean. We both want it...I mean...at least...I thought..."

Sam looks up then a little, timid and curious, and Dean has a flash through his head of Sam as a kid, Sam stumbling along in Dean's footsteps, trying to keep up. Just trying to stay beside him.

It should be awful, should be wholly incongruous with this moment, with the taste of Sam on his lips.

It's not.

"...Yeah, Sam," is all Dean says, all he can say. He doesn't think it's much. It's no out pouring of emotion, no great love poem. It's just two words, just _Yeah, Sam,_ and it's pretty weak, but Sam smiles then, like everything in the world suddenly righted itself. Dean doesn't know how he can be enough for someone like Sam, someone so special, but Dean wants to hang of for as long as he can, making Sam look just like that.

His brother leans in and presses their lips together again. Dean's tired, tired and warm, and he shuts his eyes and lets it happen.

He lets himself have it.

Sam pulls back just as slowly, the kiss no crash of lips, nothing like Dean's used to. It feels like going to sleep. Like waking up. Dean's eyes flutter open again to find his brother looking at him, eyelids low and brow furrowed.

"I mean it, Dean," Sam adds in a lower tone. "We'll figure it out. You're not--You're not alone. We'll find a better way. The job. The house. I've got your back, you know that, right?"

"...I know that, Sammy," Dean murmurs, but he hadn't really understood it, not until that moment. Sam was a little kid, once. A kid that Dean had to look after and take care of. And Sam's always going to be that kid, to Dean. At least a little bit.

But sitting there in front of him is Sam growing up, growing taller with his stupid, floppy hair and too soft eyes. Becoming an adult despite Dean's best efforts. Dean can't help but let out a huff, his lips quirking.

"You and me against the world," Dean promises.

"You and me," Sam swears in return. And if the wood hadn't cracked and shifted just then, Dean thinks they would have been there forever.

As it is, Sam smiles and shakes his head, pushing himself to his feet and picking up the bowl of iodine. He cleans up the surrounding area, picking up the supplies to be thrown away before straightening, and Dean watches him walk around the couch and over to the kitchen, listening to the sound of his footsteps.

Dean settles back against the couch, feeling the ache in his side return as the anesthetic wears off bit by bit, wincing a little but feeling... Well. Not okay. Not yet. But better.

He's pretty sure that when he's got his full blood volume back and isn't concussed to all hell, he's going to freak out about this. He's gonna remember all the 'why not's and all the very good reasons he has to run as far from this as he can. He's going to remember that it's incest and he shouldn't, that it doesn't matter that they're both boys, that they can't have kids, that their dad is gone, that they both want it. He's going to go through the checklist, and it's going to be nothing easy but...

But right now.

Right now Dean's eyelids feel heavy and his body feels warm and there's a knot in his chest that feels less like grief and more like anticipation. 

His eyes are drooping shut, vision blurring, when he sees the black and white figures on railing that stretches the length of the step down into the living area. He has to blink a few times to make them out, to see Castiel and Ruby perched there, black feathers mingling with white as the demon pushes into the angel's space. Cas looks disconcerted and Dean can't help but smirk, watching the bird shuffle around a little nervously.

But his smirk fades to something else when he sees the angel lift one long wing and drape it over Ruby's form. 

Their bodies twist together, opposite and yet the same, the boundary of them blurring somehow. Their coloring couldn't be more different, but for a moment, Dean can't quite make out where one ends and the other begins.

It's the last thing he sees before the weight of his eyelids wins out. His eyes drift shut and he can feel the warmth of the fire, can hear it crackling, an uneven counterpoint to the quiet sounds of Sam cleaning up. 

From the barely cracked open window Dean can smell the fresh cool scent of the California rain.

\-----

It's a Tuesday, five weeks after Dean's disastrous attempt at a hunt, two months since he overheard the conversation between Castiel and Ruby, when Dean finally voices what's been on his mind.

"What do we do?" he asks, Ruby sitting on the railing of their rickety front porch, one leg swinging back and forth through the thorny brushes on the other side. Cas is behind Dean, a silent sentinel, but whether he likes it or not, he's going to be part of this discussion.

"What do you mean 'what do we do?'" the demon asks absently, eyes still fixed on her charge, further out in the front yard and ducked under a tree in the rain. He's reading a book under an umbrella, like they don't have perfectly good chairs indoors, but that's Sam.

"About Sam. He's...We gotta keep him safe," Dean says.

Ruby looks surprised, actually turning her gaze away from Sam, and Castiel just looks uncomfortable. But Sam has been Dean's to look after since always, since Mom passed him over to Dean that day in the hospital. And sure, Sam's still ugly, but Dean likes him that way. Just as he is.

"It's my job to keep him safe," Ruby responds, and Dean firms his expression, letting her get away with a lot, but not this.

"Sam's _my_ little brother. You're the back up." It's short, but true, and it's all Dean'll say on the matter. Ruby's part of Sam, just like Cas is part of him, and Dean that means he loves her, because there's no part of Sam that he can hate, but it also means that they belong to him. He turns to look at Castiel. "You hear that? No more of this 'you're my duty' bullshit. Sam's in trouble? You help him."

"I was not sent here to protect him, Dean," the angel replies.

Dean doesn't like what that implies, like the smart, kind little kid out there isn't worth an angel. Dean's not an idiot. He knows that he got an angel and Sam got a demon and that means something, but even if Sam's the Antichrist, Dean still knows he's a better person than Dean is. He doesn't care who says otherwise.

"I don't give a shit, Cas. He's my brother. And if you don't, I swear to God, I'll put myself between him and whatever it is that's gonna hurt him. So if you want me alive, you protect him. And her," he tacks on, gesturing to Ruby, who looks surprised. He's not sure why. They poke and prod and annoy each other, but that's what family does. He doesn't always like Ruby, but she's family. He's never questioned that.

Cas makes a sour face, like he's tasting a lemon for the first time, but there's something else there, a different kind of reluctance. Dean can't help but think of that conversation he overheard, but he's not budging on this. He doesn't want to be a part of any creature that thinks it's below him to protect someone like Sam.

"...I do not want you to misunderstand," the angel says finally, after a long pause. "I do not dislike your brother. In fact, I find him very kind. It is just..."

Dean doesn't say anything, doesn't question. He's not curious like Sam, wanting to dig, needing to know, but he's good at working through things. He's good at making broken things work.

No one interrupts and Castiel continues.

"It is only that it is my duty to protect you and he is your greatest weakness."

"Yeah?" Dean asks, pushing. "So you think that makes him some kind of problem?"

"He is a problem."

Dean gets up and he's never hit Castiel before. He doesn't know if it'd hurt the angel or Dean himself, but he's about to find out when Castiel amends:

"He is a problem for your safety. I do not like what he...represents. As someone who is charged with keeping you hale and whole, it is worrying that there is a creature in this world that you would tear yourself apart for."

Dean doesn't want to understand, but he does. He feels the same way whenever Sam jumped in on a hunt, trying to protect some damned civvie from a poltergeist or a shifter with a knife. In those moments, Dean had hated the people they were trying to save, because he'd let them die, if he could keep Sam safe. He understands, but he still needs Cas to get it.

"Yeah, well. He's my creature. And that means Ruby is too. Nothing can happen to them Cas. You're here to _help_ me keep them safe, don't you get that?"

Cas's eyes widen, like he's never quite thought of it that way, and Dean's sure that he hasn't. After all, Cas has never been that great at questioning things, thinking outside the box. But Dean is sure of only one thing in all the world: Sam's the one that gets to make it. Every piece of Dean is devoted to looking after his little brother and Castiel is a piece of Dean.

"...Sam's special," he echoes Ruby's words from ages ago. "We gotta keep him safe, Cas. Please."

The angel is looking down, then turns his gaze out to that strange kid, watching the rain patter off of the umbrella and drip around him as Sam curls his legs in under the plastic, biting at his lower lip as he flips the pages, finger tracing whatever sacred words he's reading over.

"I...do not dislike your brother," Castiel repeats after a pause and there's something in his expression, so ever the same, so set and unmoved, but Dean's had a lifetime to stare at that stoicism, enough to see the flicker of _something else._ A reluctant affection. Like he could wish it away.

It scares Dean that an angel thinks he's supposed to hate Sam. He doesn't like what that means. But he also doesn't care.

"...It's our family, Cas." It's his final plea. In Dean's world, there's no more sacred concept, no more important bastion. Family is the beginning and end of Dean's world and for as long as he can remember, that's included the angel and the demon. The heron woman and the man in a trenchcoat.

"Our family." Castiel's voice is tinged with a kind of wonder. It's a promise and it's the thing that Dean needs his angel to understand. He glances at Ruby and finds a deer in the headlights look, her big black eyes just staring at him like she hasn't known him for the eighteen years. But she has to get it too.

"Yeah. So that means no more bullshit pranks, okay? And I won't shoot you with a BB gun. Deal?"

"Don't make deals with demons, Dean," she warns, but her smile is slow and knowing, an assent. 

Out on the lawn, Sam sneezes, on his way to catching a cold, and Dean watches him fondly, walking forward to the railing of the porch, smelling the sweet soft scent of the rain, dewy and green on the air. The water hits the roof with a steady _thip-thip-thip,_ and out on the asphalt, the occasional car rips through the puddles. 

Most twenty two year olds don't know what they're doing with their lives, but Dean knew his purpose when he was four. He doesn't have all the answers, but he's stopped asking questions. From here on out, he's going to make his own destiny.

"Nothing bad is gonna happen to him," he murmurs, half to himself and half a promise to the world. "Not so long as we're around."

\-----

Somehow, Dean doesn't expect it all to work out.

He's too used to things falling apart. He's too used to damned Winchester luck and too used to having everything go wrong. He's too used to never getting the things he wants.

And for a while, for a good long while there, he wakes up every morning expecting that day to be the day that he loses it. Sometimes he lays awake at night imagining all the ways things could go wrong. He imagines monsters and demons, imagines things like the end of the world or the apocalypse. He thinks of their mother burning to death on a ceiling. He thinks of their father finding them.

He thinks of himself just bungling things up like he always does, doing something stupid and Dean Winchester, like he did with the poltergeist, running off on a hunt or throwing himself at some bar fly and becoming his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

He doesn't know when he stops thinking like that. He can't name the day or the hour or even what season it was, but it happened. He doesn't even know how it happened, really, but he wakes up at twenty six with Sam in his arms, in their house of four years, with a GED under his belt and a job he actually _likes._ He wakes up in the house they've spent the last four years working on together with no deep desire to hunt, no itch to get back on the road, and he looks at their ceiling: their ceiling that doesn't leak anymore.

He wakes up and he doesn't feel that wanderlust, doesn't feel that empty, hollow place inside, always looking for the next thrill, the next fuck. He doesn't feel like a beggar living every day like it's his last and doesn't wonder what the day is going to bring. He already knows.

Life has a rhythm now and he's not scared of it like he used to be. He's happy -- and that doesn't terrify him like it used to.

On his chest Sam moves, shifting until Dean can feel his fluffy hair on the underside of his chin, can feel Sam's fingers curling against his pectoral. Usually the kid's up before him, always a damned early riser, even when he was a teenager. Today is different though. Today is the day after Sam got his LSAT scores back(a 174 and Dean had taken Sam out the night before to drink, Halloween be damned) and an interview for Stanford law school lined up for Monday. It's everything that his brother has ever worked for, everything Sam's always wanted and Dean couldn't be prouder. 

He can't say that he's not worried about the future. He doesn't know what happens next, doesn't understand this civvie life like he understood that vagabond drifting, doesn't know so well how to be a person as he does a ghost. But Sam knows. And whatever happens next, wherever Sam goes, Dean knows he's going to follow.

They're together.

Like, _together_ together, and as much as that still freaks Dean out sometimes, it's good.

Sam stirs and raises his head. His hair is a mess, little wings sticking out this way and that, one eye open a little more than the other and a big red spot on one cheek, where his face was pressed to Dean's skin. He looks hilariously disordered, so unlike Sam, and Dean loves him. When Sam makes a grumbling noise and moves in for a kiss, morning breath and all, Dean doesn't dodge it. It tastes kind of like ass, is sloppy and uncoordinated and wet, but his hand comes up, cups Sam's cheek, and his fingers press into the familiarity of that hair.

Dean's not stupid. He knows this isn't supposed to feel as natural as it does. He knows that it's supposed to feel wrong, dirty. It's supposed to feel like grit, like everything immoral and bad, and he should draw back like Maureen did from Marty, a look of horror on his face. Genes repelling like positively charged magnets.

Instead Dean's hands come up, slide along the open expanse of Sam's back, press to the smoothness of his skin until he finds the angles of his brother's shoulderblades, feels them shift under his fingers. Instead, Dean presses up into that kiss, head twisting to the side opposite Sam's and he takes it, open mouthed and messy and not caring at all.

It hadn't been easy and it hadn't happened over night. For a while, Dean had stuck to his guns. He'd been so sure, so _certain_ that keeping Sam at arm's length was the right thing to do, the _only_ thing to do. He'd been convinced that he just had to wait long enough. Sam would find a girl, or hell, a boy. Sam would find someone _not_ his brother and this would slip by under them. It would be okay.

It hadn't been though.

It had been coming home to see Sam in tears, looking through the window while his brother cried into Ruby's arms, Sam so very rarely a crier. It had been standing outside of their home that they'd been working so hard on together and realizing he was ruining it. He was ruining the home he was building for Sam. For every hole he patched, for every thing he made better, he was breaking Sam down, making things worse.

He was trying to give Sam a home with one hand and destroying it with the other.

It had still felt like dying when he gave in. It had still felt like he was the worst brother, committing the worst sin, but he couldn't keep them in that limbo state. He couldn't force Sam to go through everything alone and painful. And to be honest, Dean didn't want to be alone either.

Sam's lips traverse Dean's jaw, sticky and lazy, grazing over stubble, and Dean brings one hand up, sliding up the back of Sam's neck and into his hair, the curve of Sam's skull in the palm of his hand. It's not like he's not aware that he's cheating. That he's gotten the best thing in the world and no one else gets to have it. That he's not just Sam's brother, he's Sam's _someone_ in a way that he shouldn't be. He already gets to have Sam as family and he's still greedy, still wanting more, wanting more of Sam than he has any right to have.

But Sam wants him too and Dean's just not strong enough to deny them this, to try and hold back when both of them want this so badly.

He still feels guilty sometimes. It's hard not to. He's the big brother, he's the one he knows that people would glare at if they knew, even if Sam _is_ twenty two. Dean's the one with the responsibility, the one who could so easily be taking advantage.

But then he has to scoff and remind himself that Sam's never let anyone take advantage of him in his life -- hell, the kid tosses his head and pitches a fit over shit he _should_ shoulder, let alone the stuff he shouldn't. Sam is stubborn and beautiful, a pain in the ass and someone that challenges Dean almost constantly, and Dean's not going to lie, it was _Sam_ that pursued _him._

And when it's mornings like this, when Sam shifts to straddle him, sheets slipping off of that long body, its hard to feel anything but lucky.

Dean's hands settle at Sam's waist, trace the ridges of muscle, the arch of his ribcage. Sam is all sinew, has been ever since he grew a foot and a half overnight, it seems. He's strong, both of them still in shape, and he's not gangly, not quite, but he always looks a little stretched out. An adult, but not quite a man yet, not quite having attained the breadth of shoulder. Dean's fingers sink in between each rib, run over the furrows and grins to himself when Sam arches away -- still ticklish.

It's Sam that reaches for the lube and they don't always get this organized with morning sex, but hell. Sam got his scores back yesterday and it seems a worthy celebration. 

They've switched it up of course. There's no way that Dean Winchester would say no to something new. He's kind of a hedonist and taking it up the ass had been on his checklist for a while.

It had been pretty good. He could tell why people liked it. It had hit all the right spots and all, but when it came down to it, for them, most of the time Dean ended up pitching. It had less to do with the physical sensation than it did their relationship -- after all, a prostate was a prostate, and Dean wasn't immune to its charms. He just didn't like giving up control. Especially when it was Sam.

It wasn't a competitive thing. He wasn't competitive with Sam, not like that. But he'd always been in charge of Sam, always the one tying the shoes and leading across the street, he'd always been the one teaching Sam, how to write, how to fight, how to run. And he isn't an idiot: he knows just how twisted it is that _that_ translates into _this._ That he wants to control Sam sexually. That he enjoys being the one to take care of Sam in a way that he really, really shouldn't.

It's just that Sam likes it too. 

It's the only excuse Dean has, the only flimsy justification he has to offer and he clings to it. 

Sam ends up on all fours over him, face just above Dean's and Dean's fingers pressing inside of him, an experience Dean wouldn't have previously predicted as hot before this, other than an exchange of blow jobs, Dean had only ever been with women. He doesn't find men _un_ attractive, exactly, but his needle(heh, needle) is pointed pretty firmly towards the ladies. Sex with a man is decidedly different -- all planes and angles, all smooth surfaces. More than that, there's more to handle. There's a whole other cock in the equation, though things get just about the same amount of messy(if you're doing it right) as with a woman. 

And it's not like you just go straight in with a girl -- again, if you're doing it right. Dean likes to play around anyway, but it's just polite to get a girl wet before you go to town. Sometimes that means eating out, sometimes it means lube. Depends on the lady's preference. And sure, he'd done anal with girls before, too.

But girls didn't have a prostate and the prep had mostly just been that: prep.

Sam's different.

Sam's face contorts, goes strained. His eyes shut and his breathing picks up, teeth occasionally bared in a grimace of pleasure, back arching down and hips arching up and god, that's hot. It's so hot to watch Sam over him, losing it, bit by bit. It feeds some needy beast in Dean, something old that whispers _mine,_ that whispers _ours._ He's always been fiercely possessive of Sam, even as a child: he always wanted Sam's attention to be on him.

He always wanted to be the center of Sam's world.

And here, now, with Sam's body shifting over him, with all of Sam concentrated on him, Dean thinks it's just about the hottest thing he's ever seen.

Sam ends up riding him, straddled across his hips and rising and falling, the motion slow, tracing the line between perfect and frustrating. It's lazy and long, something spread out over their late morning start, mid morning sunlight coming in through the window and across the bed. Dean doesn't have much opportunity to move, has to let Sam dictate the rhythm. It makes his hands clench on Sam's hips, makes them move up and down like he can get Sam to move just a little more, a little faster. He feels the crest of orgasm wash in and wash out, like a wave he can't quite reach.

When it rushes in, when he can taste it, he pulls Sam down onto him firmly, pelvis thrusting up and deep, holding Sam there as he comes. It takes him a second, has to breathe through the intensity of it before he remembers to shift one hand to Sam, wrapping around his brother's length and stroking him quickly, no art, no finesse -- not a playful tease but touching with intent, with one goal in mind and he's just on the tail end of his own orgasm when Sam's hits. It's half painful, in a dizzying, too-much-pleasure kind of way, when Sam clenches tight around him and gives a weak cry, and Dean groans, head pressing back into the pillow.

It takes a few minutes, takes breathing hard and just listening to the fervent pump of his blood between his ears, before he feels Sam slide off of him, winces as he feels himself slide out, soft and over sensitive. Sam flops down next to him, both of them a mess and the bed worse. 

Dean's pretty grateful that laundry is Sam's job.

"Happy Halloween," Sam murmurs, quiet, cheeky, and Dean huffs a laugh.

"Now I just want to go back to sleep."

"You could," Sam replies and Dean's eyes are shut, so he more feels than sees Sam move in close, feels him press a kiss to the corner of Dean's mouth. Sam is a guy, is unmistakably male, both in form and attitude, but he can be ridiculously mushy, especially right after sex. Dean will take it to the grave that he thinks it's pretty cute.

"Girl," Dean mutters, pretty certain he's going to get a lecture on being sexist later, but it's habit. Tradition. "And no, I can't. Unlike some folks, _I_ don't get to have the weekend off. Someone's gotta put the bacon on the table."

"Stay home today," Sam whines as Dean rolls away, pushing himself to sit up. He grunts and stretches, feeling loose and languid as his back cracks and he chuckles.

"Playing hooky? Is that really my little brother suggesting that?"

"It's a special day," Sam replies, and Dean can hear the pout.

"No, _yesterday_ was a special day and we went out to drink, remember?" Dean looks back over his shoulder, feeling a rush of fresh affection at the picture Sam makes, naked and half swathed in sheets, gorgeous and messy and messed up by _Dean._ Dean gets that he's being a big, stupid caveman, but goddamn.

_Goddamn._

"It's Saturday," he reminds. "So I'll be home a bit late."

"Fine," Sam says with a dramatic sigh, flopping over on to his back. 

"Sides. You got like...interview prep to do," Dean reminds as he gets up, searching around for a towel. He hears Sam groan.

"No. Damnit, I just finished being stressed over _school._ I want a day off."

"Princess."

"Slave driver."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Dean huffs again and swipes a clean-ish towel off of the floor, making his way towards the bathroom. There's no way he's going out to work without a shower now.

\-----

It might be November, but the summer heat is only just now fading this year.

Dean's just fine with seeing it go.

The two mile walk from their house into town can get pretty brutal in the summer, anyone outside getting beaten down by the heat. He's had some pretty wicked sunburns on his scalp and the back of his neck before Sam started making him put on sunscreen in June and July.

Right now though, the weather is pleasantly warm without being oppressive, a sweet autumn breeze still blowing and the pathways alive with green, even deeper into the city. Dean's not a stop-and-smell-the-flowers kind of guy, but even he can appreciate the peace of walking into town, trees and plants flowering on either side of the road, a whole host of birds twittering around. Cas is walking two steps behind him, hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. Dean has his backpack on, his uniform in there, taking a little pleasure in the quiet and simplicity of the walk, cars occasionally zipping by, nothing for him to do, nothing to think about but putting one foot in front of the other.

Going to work isn't the awful thing it was four years ago.

True to his word, Sam had helped out. It had taken a few months of studying and more stress than Dean was regularly willing to invest in academia, but they'd gotten Dean his GED -- and his chance to get out of the fast food sector. Putting in his two weeks notice had practically been orgasmic. He still didn't have references, didn't have a whole lot going for him, but he remembers that, at that moment, he'd felt certain that everything was going to work out.

The next two months, being completely jobless and living broke as sin, had well cured him of that feeling.

In the end, it hadn't been a mechanic or a record store or anything like that to pick Dean up. It had been the kitchen for a local restaurant -- pretty upscale by Dean's judgment -- and even though he'd felt like he was going to be an ill fit, it had worked out strangely well. He'd never really thought about it, never thought of himself as a cook, but the fact of the matter was that if Dean hadn't found ways to shove vegetables and fruit into their diet on occasion, John and Sam would have ended up with scurvy.

It wasn't like he was some kind of weird Julia Child. He tended to just throw things in a bowl or a frying pan and see how it worked out, but he'd acknowledged, around nine or ten, that man could not survive on packaged ramen alone and had learned out to dice a damned onion.

He really hadn't thought that that made him chef material, never considered himself a man of great art or culture, but in the last couple of years he'd worked himself up from dishwasher to sous chef and he didn't consider that half bad.

It's a weird thing and it's a thing he'd never really considered doing before. If someone had mentioned it to him a few years ago he'd probably have brushed it off as silly or girlie, but there was nothing in this world more metal than a kitchen in full swing -- between the fire and the knives and the yelling, sometimes Dean though he was in a war zone.

It's not like Starbucks. It's not some soul draining pit of despair. It's not the complete defeat of having to bow his head and make himself stomach something he hates just to make sure that his little brother doesn't end up in a ditch somewhere.

In fact, Dean sort of _likes_ his job. It's hard and the hours can get long and it's nothing he'd ever dreamed of doing before, but he likes it. He likes doing things with his hands, shaping things with his hands. He likes that the things he makes end up going out to people who enjoy them, who send their compliments back. He likes, most of all, that he's _good_ at it. He goes in every day with the feeling that he's capable of this.

And that feeling reminds him of hunting.

"Dean!"

He hears his name called out as he comes in the back door, hanging up his bookbag and unzipping the back to pull out his apron and the cap he wears to cover his hair. He glances around the corner to see Andrew, one of the other sous chefs waving frantically to him.

"C'mon, Leonard went home early and the brunch crowd is still in here. I need you to take over organizing the grill," he says, anxiety in his tone and jerky little 'hurry up' motions to go along with it.

Fulfilling though it may be, working in the kitchen _is not_ a low stress job. Dean pulls on his apron and cap and goes to wash his hands in the hand sink, scrubbing well before making his way into the fray.

When he was a hunter, he'd run hard, fought dirty, crashed like hitting a brick wall. It had been exhausting. And amazing.

For every sacrifice, for every cut or blow or broken bone, for every brush with death he got to see some face smiling at him like he was a hero, and he'd never have admitted to it, but he couldn't even find the words for what that did for him. The way it had made him feel important.

It had been four years, though, since his last hunt. Since that disastrous fight in the library and dragging himself home to Sam. It had a been four years since he'd realized he couldn't just run out into the night on a whim, throw himself into danger and act like it was okay. He'd always believed that hunting was right, good. Was the job of men and heroes. But it had taken him a potentially fatal gut wound to remember that that was his dad in his head, was the belief of a man who'd tried to do something heinous.

Dean still misses the thrill, from time to time, still misses the feeling of saving a life, but he hadn't been wrong before.

He was saving a life. _Is_ saving a life.

It's because of Dean that Sam has this chance and Dean's proud of that. He's proud that he's got a job where he knows he's valued, that he's managed to make a house that should be condemned feel almost like a home. He'll never kill as many monsters as his father but he's built a life for his family and Dean tells himself every day that it was something his father was never able to do.

By the time his break comes around, five hours later, Dean is hot and sticky and jonesing for just a breath of fresh air. Sadly, that's never to be found out in the alley behind the restaurant: Johnny and Hex take their cigarette breaks there, and Dean has vices, god knows he does, but cigarettes have never been them. You could run from a banshee with liver damage -- not so much reduced lung capacity.

He ends up where he normally does, leaned back against the edge of the building, out on the street. The front of the restaurant is placed directly on the main street, looking out over the brick sidewalk and the white flowered trees planted at careful intervals along its edge. 

It's a Saturday afternoon so the area is pretty busy, people going back and forth, college kids decked out in what they think looks good, chatting as they walk from stores or eateries, a few of the student lounging out on the green at the end of the street. Dean has his fingers tucked into the edge of his pockets, just letting the sweet scented breeze cool him down.

Cas is turning lazy figure eights in the sky when someone crashes into Dean. He's not expecting it(and the accusation _'out of practice'_ runs unbidden through his head) and almost falls over, but he manages to catch himself, throwing one leg out to the side and stumbling a couple of paces.

"Jesus!" he yells automatically, trying to steady his weight.

When he looks up he sees a young woman with short cut blonde hair, one hand pressed to the brick of the building, the other toting several bags. Dean hears the heavy flap of Castiel's wings, seeing the angel land on the awning above them. His long neck cranes down curiously, always overly cautious.

"Oh _crap,"_ the woman groans, taking an uneven step to the side, lifting one leg and lowering her free hand to awkwardly remove her shoe. Dean can see as she lifts it that the heel is broken, barely hanging on to the sole. She pouts at it, then raises his eyes to Dean. "I'm so sorry-- It's just, you know, these _bricks."_

She makes a dejected sound, motioning to the pavement below them. It's got the whole folksy artsy hipster vibe to it and Dean's never given it a second thought, but as he glances down at the grooves between each brick, he can see how it'd be inconvenient.

He shakes his head, the charming smile coming out on its own, no permission from him.

"It's no problem. Accidents happen -- you alright?" He glances her over just in case, but she looks alright enough -- there's a small scuff on the meat of her palm from grabbing the wall to steady herself, but it's hardly an injury.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll be alright." She sighs. "Can't say as much for my shoes..." She glances up and looks abashed. "I must sound like the most self-centered diva... I practically bowl you over and I'm whining about my _shoes."_

"It's fine," Dean waves off with a huff of a laugh. "As I hear tell, shoes are pretty serious business."

"Oh yes, they can be," the woman replies with a smile, leaning down to put the shoe on the ground and depositing her bags there as well. She removes her other shoe, leaning back against the wall that Dean was previously occupying, casting her under the shade of the awning. "My name's Meg, by the way."

"Meg? Nice to meet you. I'm Dean." He smiles, smirks more like it, and holds out a hand, cocking his head to the side.

It's automatic, really, to put on a little charm. It's not like he sleeps with other people anymore, hasn't picked up a lady in years. He'd never seen himself as the domesticated type, but Sam's done well enough to prove him wrong. It kind of figures, in that sick and wrong way, that it'd be Sam to change Dean's tune, to wear Dean down. Dean's always been a sucker for the kid.

But Sam hasn't managed to cure Dean of his need to schmooze. He's an incorrigible flirt and besides some put upon sighs, more brotherly than anything else, Sam seems to put up with that. It's not like Dean's going to go anywhere with it. He didn't step out on Sam. He just likes the way it makes him feel to have folks look at him like that. 

And to be honest, he kind of doesn't know any other way to interact with women.

"Pleasure's all mine," Meg responds, soft lips lilting up as her hand slips into his, fine and delicate. He likes the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners. "Especially given that I used you as a human cushion."

"It's what I'm here for." He doesn't so much shake her hand as squeeze it before letting it go.

"The apron gave me different ideas." She quirks an eyebrow, one side of her mouth curling up, pretty and playful. Four years ago Dean would have gone for it. He's pleasantly surprised to find that he doesn't even feel a twinge of regret that he can't.

He's where he wants to be. _With_ who he wants to be.

"Yeah, well. Don't believe its lies." He keeps it polite, keeps it friendly. She seems nice enough, after all. "I should head back in, speaking of that. M'only on my break."

"Wait a second," she cuts in quickly, reaching out when he takes a step back towards the entrance. Her fingers fall into the crook of his elbow. She looks hopeful. "Awkward meeting aside... You seem like a nice guy."

"I appreciate that -- and you seem nice too--"

"I know it's kind of considered a little too forward but--" She looks abashed, eyes sliding off to the side. "Well, maybe I could get you dinner or something. You know. To make up for the full body slam."

Dean chuckles, shaking his head.

"Sweetheart, you're all of this big. Trust me, the full body slam wasn't that bad. And I appreciate it, I do. Trust me, being forward isn't anything to be ashamed of. Being forward is _awesome_ \--" She looks hopeful at that and Dean knows he has to dial it back. It's not like it's her fault. He started with the flirting and the charming and the sly eyes. He'd given her all the signals. Of course she'd think he was being more serious than he was. "And like I said, you seem nice. Great even. But I'm with someone."

"Oh, I--" she starts, obviously flustered.

Dean shakes his head quickly, taking a step over to her.

"No, it's alright. Swear to god, I'da totally taken you up on that." He nods, going for what he hopes is comforting. He's not lying, either. She _is_ crazy hot. He would have totally chatted her up, back then. He's just found something better than the one night stands. "Kind of hard to resist flirting with a girl pretty as you--" Christ, there he went again.

_Tone it down, Winchester._

"--but I can't. Still, lemme uh, get you a coupon or something. For the restaurant." There's no way he could sound any lamer. A _coupon._

Meg laughs a little then, nervous but amused, looking at him skeptically.

"I didn't think that Alphonse's gave out coupons," she replies and he curses to himself.

"Uh, yeah, we don't--"

"Dean?"

"Yeah?" he replies with a wince.

"You're not as smooth as you think you are." She gives him an amused smile and he rubs the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I've been told."

She reaches down, grabbing both her shoes. She glances them over before giving them up for a lost cause, dropping them both into her shopping bags. She hooks her hands through the straps and straightens, wiggling bare toes on the sidewalk.

"It was nice to meet you, Dean," she says, shaking her head a little to try and get her bangs out of her eyes. The effort is made wasted when she quirks her head to the side, sending dirty blonde strands wisping over her forehead and cheek. "I hope I'll see you 'round? Without the sudden impact, that is."

"Yeah, I'm sure. Come in for some grub sometime," he offers, still wanting to be nice. 

She flashes him one last smile before moving around him, the soles of her bare feet padding down the bricks, over the sun-warmed clay. Dean watches her go, but moves back towards the front door, certain he's gone a little over his break window -- and they're short staffed today to boot.

There's a hurried flutter of wings and Castiel lands beside him, claws into polished shoes and Dean doesn't even have to look to see the angel's frown. He's grown up with the persistence of Cas, the existence of Cas -- the disapproval is something Dean expects to be there.

"I do not like her," the angel comments dryly.

"What's not to like?" Dean responds, low as he can so that no one else can hear. His hand comes up to the handle on the door, fingers curling around it, but his eyes are following the curve of Meg's ass as she walks. Everyone stares at nice asses. It's the only gentlemanly thing to do.

He certainly stares at Sam's ass plenty.

"She seems...wrong." For a second, the angel's words catch Dean's attention, but then Castiel continues. "And I do not think that Sam would appreciate you doing that."

Dean turns his head away from Meg and back to Cas, giving him a dirty look.

"Since when are you a big champion of my relationship with Sam?" he asks. Of course, it's not that Cas is necessarily _against_ it, at least not in the way Dean would have expected. The angel's never much cared about the incest. It's more that he's just uncomfortable with Dean putting himself in danger for someone else.

It's also just that Cas is a killjoy and whenever he sees anyone happy he has to walk over and squash it. 

The angel makes a bit of a face, as much as he ever does.

"I am just _saying_ \--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know," Dean sighs, put upon. He tugs the door open a bit, looking over at Cas first. "I'm a bad boyfriend who deserves to be spanked-- _oo,_ spanking. Always wanted to get a lil' experimental. Think Sam'd be up for it?" He punches Cas on the arm. "Thanks for the idea, buddy."

Once, Dean thinks Castiel would have spluttered, but now he just grumbles, the two of them walk back into the restaurant, Dean nimbly dodging tables as he heads back for the kitchen.

By the time his shift ends at ten, he's exhausted and just wants to go home and collapse, maybe flick on their terrible old television and watch whatever they can pick up. The blonde woman and her broken heel are the farthest thing from his mind.

\-----

The second time that a fire changes everything is a day like any other.

They're in the middle of re-arranging the house for some reason -- Dean's never been able to figure out why. It was Sam's idea. But it's made everything a mess. Dean doesn't even know how they managed to accumulate so much _stuff._ He's so used to packing light, living light, everything pared down to a few bags at most.

Now they've lived in the same place, the same town for four years. They have things. They have _furniture._ The whole thing is kind of surreal and Dean's not ashamed to admit that Sam's better at dealing with it than him.

It's Sunday, the day before Sam's big, hot shot law school interview, when they first see the smoke.

They're walking back from the store, bags of groceries in hand, a car never having been in the cards in the last four years, despite Dean's frequent laments.

"You're obsessing," Dean tells his brother.

"I'm not _obsessing,"_ Sam counters, giving him a disapproving look. "I'm _preparing."_

"You're just using the nice word." Dean shifts the bags in his hands, the weight of them cutting the plastic into his fingers a bit. Stupid milk. "We'll figure it out when we get there."

"I'm just saying, there's nothing wrong with calling ahead. We can't _always_ fly by the seat of our pants."

"Worked well enough before," Dean dismisses with a shrug. They'd pulled up in Palo Alto with nothing but two duffels and a determination to make it and they'd done fine. He's always left the big future planning to Sam -- Dean's really more of a present kind of guy. Even so, Sam's not wrong. If Sam's going to be here for a bajillion more years, they need to figure out what they're doing. 

He'd be bitter about his little brother getting into a school in such an expensive area of the country if he weren't so damned proud.

"What's that?" Sam asks, and Dean glances at him first, seeing the furrowed brow, before following Sam's gaze out to the trees. Over the tops of them he can see black smoke billowing up and he frowns.

"Dunno. Must be some of the preppy kids failing at a barbeque. They've done it before."

"Yeah, but--" Sam still looks disconcerted, shaking his head. "It's in the wrong direction. There's no student housing our way. Besides, it's awfully...big, don't you think?"

"How the hell would I know?" Dean asks. "Do I look like a geek? Someone who doesn't know how to light a damned grill?"

"Dean," Sam responds, not joking now, serious. Dean's frown deepens, feeling something cold go through him and he's aware of Cas coming up to stand at his side, tense and wary, and Dean doesn't like that. He wants to keep things calm. He wants to keep them from panicking like stupid chickens and blowing things out of proportion but it's hard not to follow Sam into worry. Hard not to get swept up into suspicion. They've lived their lives with one eye always on the door, especially the last four years, always waiting, always searching, expecting the other shoe to drop any minute, but every day had ticked by, one after the other without any incident. Dean had wanted to believe they were in the clear.

He wants to think that maybe they really did leave all their problems behind.

"Dean," Sam says again, voice chilled, full of fear, and then he drops all his bags right there on the sidewalk. He launches himself forward, sprinting away and Dean curses, seeing Ruby's wings spread, walking next to them one minute and a bird the next, flying after Sam in a frantic flutter of feathers.

"Sam!" Dean calls out, blood already pumping hot, chanting worry and _Sam Sam Sam_ and goddamn his brother's stupid long legs because Dean's dropping his things, running to catch up, but there's no way. He manages to at least not fall any further behind, running a few feet after him, skin itching with the need to get between Sam and danger. He flies down the sidewalk at his top speed, feet slapping against the pavement, lungs expanding and Cas beside him is a given.

He sees Sam round the corner to their home and his heart almost climbs out of his chest, hating Sam being out of his sight for even a second. He throws himself around the bend, coming to almost an immediate stop at Sam's back. The first thing he sees, the only thing he sees for a second, is Sam. Sam's there. Still standing, still breathing.

It's the second after that that Dean looks up and sees their house, their home, consumed in flame.

Dean's mouth opens but no words come out, no sound. Black smoke is billowing out of every orifice, curling rapidly over itself as it spills out into the air, covering swathes of the sky. It's dark, poisonous -- a thick cloud that Dean can't see through, and the flames are so damned big, licking up every wall, dancing across the roof. They're consuming everything, he knows. Every piece of furniture, every reconstructed wall, every little memory and piece of life that they'd built and Dean's just glad Sam is here, Sam's alive, Sam's okay, but he can't help the pang of seeing everything they'd worked for, everything they'd made, crumbling to black and char.

His mind flashes back to being four years old, clutched to his father's side and watching the world burn. He remembers holding Sam tucked against his chest and promising him that it would all be okay, not a false comfort but a genuine belief. The absolute faith of a four year old in the divinity of mother. The belief that nothing could possibly take her from them and that she'd come walking out that burning doorway unsinged.

It was Dean's first lesson: nothing is permanent.

He reaches out, hand coming to clasp Sam's shoulder, needing the touch, the anchor, and he's glad for it because in the next second Sam tries to rip himself away, tries to run into the inferno for...for what, Dean doesn't know. Doesn't care. His arms flail in front of him and he yanks Sam back to him, heart beating a mile a minute, even if Sam only made it two steps. Dean would set fire to the house himself if it was that or lose Sam -- he'll happily watch the damned thing burn, so long as Sam stays safe.

"Sam!" he yells, trying to get his brother's attention, trying to snap him out of it. "Sam! Damnit, stop!"

"No!" Sam yells, but he's not replying to Dean. He's just yelling, just screaming his denial to nothing and Dean yanks him back, wraps both arms around his brother's skinny frame and hangs on. 

"It's not worth it!" Dean says, clinging hard. "It's not-- Please, Sam!"

He can feel his brother breathing hard against him, can feel his ribcage expanding and contracting, hard and heavy. Dean's used to the sensation. He's used to listening to Sam pant, used to watching the way his body can arch and stutter. This is nothing like that.

He can hear the fear in each breath, the grief. 

"Sam," he says again, lower this time. He presses his forehead to his brother's shoulder, hands clenched in Sam's clothing. Sam is warm and solid and that's what Dean has right now. Sam is warm and solid and alive and that's what matters.

"You--" Sam starts, but it's not directed at Dean. The tone, startled and afraid, makes Dean's blood run cold.

He lifts his head, body braced, looking over Sam's shoulder at their house, what remains of it as it begins to collapse, bit by bit, and he sees what he couldn't before: there's a man standing there, standing right next to it like the heat means nothing, not a spark or cinder on his clothes. He's watching them, _smiling_ at them, and his eyes are pus yellow. On the ground near him are charred bodies, the bodies of whoever dared to come and intervene, and it explains the silence, the lack of anyone daring to leave their homes.

It takes Dean all of a heart beat and no thought at all to push Sam back behind him, and Ruby and Castiel flutter in even further in front. Dean keeps one hand on Sam's chest, the other pulling out the only weapon he has on himself: a pocket knife. It's a good one, about four inches long and sharp but he's still wishing it were a gun instead. He can't help but think he's gone soft. He's gotten too used to safety.

"Who the hell are you?" he demands, voice a growl, holding the knife up in his left hand.

"Dean," the man greets like he knows him, like they're buddies. "Dean and Sam... Long time no see."

"Who are you?!" Dean snaps again.

"You've done pretty well for yourself here..." The man glances up at the inferno to his side. "Nice little house in the city, nice little life... Problem is, that just doesn't work for me."

He turns his head back to face them, perpetual smirk across his face and Dean wants to take his knife to it, cut it off, cut it out. Dean's jaw tightens, teeth pressing together, tension in every inch of his frame. He won't rise to the goading. Monsters, the ones that _can_ talk, anyway, love this shit. Dean knows better than to play too far into it.

"I've been looking for you. Twenty years, in fact. Not long for a man of my age but irritating all the same. You'll have to forgive my...ire. I just couldn't help myself. You give someone the run around long enough, it starts to get to them." The man, _demon,_ Dean's pretty sure, tucks his hands into his pockets, strolling forward. Dean wants to back up, but Sam's a solid wall at his back, unmoving. 

"Twenty years is pretty impressive though," the demon continues. "A respectable amount of time to dodge someone with my kinds of connections. For a while there you really gave me _fits."_ The smirk crawls across his face, slither of a motion. He looks at Sam. "But here you are. Settled and signed. Stayed still long enough for me to find you again, my Lord."

"You're the one from the nursery," Ruby says and it surprises Dean even though he knows it shouldn't. There's no reason that the yellow-eyed demon wouldn't be able to see her -- other demons always do -- but Dean's used to Ruby and Cas belonging to _them._ Even with ghosts and like, even on hunts where their prey could sense or see the two guardians, Ruby and Cas hadn't been chatty with them. Now Ruby's staring at this man, the man-shaped monster, her dark eyes confused and wary. 

It feels invasive, itching like a violation, for Cas or Ruby to talk to anyone else.

"You were the one that was there that night -- what are you doing?" she continues, sounding too lost. Dean doesn't like it. He doesn't like being the ones in the dark. Sam's pleas to find out what he is, what they are, echo in the back of Dean's head, sharp with regret. He'd just hoped that if they could ignore it, it would _go away._

But the words catch up with him, they always do, and Dean sucks in a breath of realization.

"You're the one that killed our mom," he says, and he hears Sam make a sound behind him. Dean doesn't even begin to know how to process that information.

"She got in my way," the demon replies with a casual shrug, carelessly tossing off the accusation, ignoring how irrevocably he altered their lives.

"You son of a bitch," Dean spits.

"You think that this matters. You think that this life has significance. Meaning. Well, it doesn't." The demon begins to move, his smile falling as he walks around them, circling them slowly and Dean tries to always keep himself between Sam and danger. "You are one of a thousand, one of a million. You're just the current face of an old tradition and I've killed you before. I'll kill you again."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean grits out.

"I'm saying that it's a bad idea to get in my way, Dean," the demon responds, voice curling, too sweet. He stops walking. "This is no fleeting thing. This isn't something you can talk me out of. I've searched for the answer for ten thousand years. I've _waited_ for ten thousand years. Twenty two more was annoying but necessary, I suppose. But I need you to understand, Dean: there's nothing you can do to stop this. There is nothing you can do to stop me."

"Stop you from doing what?" Sam asked from behind him and Dean wanted to tell him to shut up -- Dean wanted the demon's attention as far away from Sam as possible. "What do you even want with us?"

"This is a pointless conversation. I've answered your questions a thousand times before. Explained this dance a thousand times. I've learned my lesson. You always forget. You slide right on and forget about me, forget about all the sins you've committed and get a clean slate." The demon shook his head, letting out a displeased grunt. "This was supposed to be your punishment."

"Burning our house down?" Dean asks snidely.

"That was just for fun." The demon quirks his head with a little smile. "And, you know. Good memories."

"You're a monster," Sam hisses. "And we're going to kill you."

"Oh, will you now? That'd be a neat trick."

"We've killed hundreds like you."

"Nothing like _me,_ my Lord."

Sam pauses at that second usage and Dean tenses again, fingers wrapping tightly around the grip of his knife. At first he thought it was just a tic of speech, an expression of exasperation. It's not. He's calling _Sam_ 'Lord.'

There's a sudden _crack_ as something essential inside of the house snaps and Dean winces as he hears the structure collapse, hears the snap and pop of sparks and fire, the whoosh of flame and air exploding out of compressed spaces. He remembers the sound of shattering glass, the sound of childhood ending.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" Sam asks, suspicion in his voice.

The demon tuts and shakes his head, looking down at the dirt. His hands are still in his pockets and he looks so casual, so unperturbed. It's infuriating -- standing in front of the monster that ruined Dean's life, ruined Dean's family, and knowing that that monster saw them as so inconsequential. Like the life he'd snuffed out meant nothing.

"You two..." the demon mutters, then looks up. "Always together. Even now." His expression darkens and he raises his head to look directly at Sam, blame and hatred as bright as the flames there. "You were supposed to be _ours._ You were supposed to be on our side. But it was always _him_ you turned to. Always at each other's throats but consumed with one another. Rivals who couldn't take their eyes off of each other."

"Leave," Castiel cuts in. His wings flare, shifting out and arching, feathers bright and separate, a threat display. "Leave now. This is not meant to happen. You are not meant to interfere."

"As if you know what's meant to be." The demon snorts.

"You risk everything just by speaking. You threaten everything that both of our peoples have worked for. Everything we have worked for for ten thousand years. They'll have your head for this, if they ever find out." Cas speaks with that absolute certainty, but the demon just laughs.

Laughs and laughs, like it's the funniest joke.

"What's so damned funny?" Ruby hisses and Dean feels her frustration. The two of them have always been irritatingly alike.

"I think it's just adorable how convinced you are," the demon replies, his chuckling fading out slowly, becoming something more sinister. "You bought into their lies so eagerly. All of your kind did. You're like children. It's hilarious how cheaply you were bought and sold."

Dean doesn't like this. He didn't like it _before_ when it was just their house burning down and he liked it even less when it was just him, Cas, Ruby and a knife between Sam and danger, but this is something worse. Dean had always been willing to live in the dark, happy to be his father's soldier, to believe in him and take his word for it -- and everyone remembered how that had ended. And all his life he'd accepted the fact that Castiel and Ruby were just there. He accepted that _they_ knew, and they were on his side, so he left it at that.

He's beginning to think, if they make it through this, that Sam had been right. That just blindly following isn't a virtue.

Because it makes his hair stand up on the back of his neck to see Ruby and Cas look confused -- to see the two creatures that are beyond them, a demon and an angel that're supposed to be preternaturally aware, look as confused in all of this as Dean. It makes him feel terrifyingly unstable.

"But you are what you are and I am what I am," the demon continues, taking another step forward. Cas and Ruby tense. "And I am finally here. After searching for so long..."

He stops then, turning to look at Ruby, yellow eyes staring into her black ones. There's no humor to him now. Nothing but a deadly kind of hatred, like a serpent coiled and waiting to strike. Dean doesn't have time to do anything about it. He feels his brother push forward and he suddenly has his hands full with trying to keep Sam back.

 _"You_ got in my way before -- back in the nursery," the yellow-eyed man says to Ruby, eyes narrowing, accusatory. "I made the mistake of thinking you'd have the sense not to do that."

"You shouldn't have been there," Ruby responds. She bares her teeth. "You shouldn't be _here."_

"I don't intend on waiting another twenty years. This time, I'll take care of you first." 

Dean has enough time to see Ruby's eyes widen before an invisible force hits her from the side, sending her tumbling through the air. He can hear Sam crying out next to him, struggling to get passed him, and Dean's just hanging on, trying to hold him back as he watches the yellow-eyed demon approach Ruby. She's pushing herself up, hair full of dust and her graceful swallow's wings arched up in the air.

The demon delivers a swift kick to her abdomen and she grunts, falling on to her side. Cas flies forward but the demon lifts a hand without even looking and the angel goes tumbling back, smacking hard into a tree. Dean can't do anything for him or Ruby -- all he can do is try his best to keep their pact. Their deal that they would keep Sam safe.

The demon is standing over Ruby now and Sam is shrieking for her, scrambling to escape Dean's arms. Dean feels bruises form with Sam's kicks and elbows, feels Sam's scratches on his forearms. 

"Sam, Sam--" he's saying, trying to get through to his brother but he knows it's a lost cause. Ruby is Sam's everything.

She's staring up at the other demon, the first tendrils of fear there. All around the demon a wind begins to build, harsh and cold, whipping around him and Ruby and cutting off the world from them.

"You cannot kill me," Ruby murmurs, a shocked confusion on her features -- that little girl lost look that Dean can't take, too used to her relentless confidence. "I was sent here to protect him. _Our people_ sent me to protect him. Guide him."

"You mistake your purpose," the demon replies, hand darting out to grab her neck, unnaturally long fingers grasping her flesh and squeezing, lifting her off the ground as if her weight is meaningless.

 _"No!"_ Sam screams, voice going suddenly hoarse with desperation and it's only Dean's hands that hold him back, clinging to that writhing body, Sam almost slipping away a million times. Dean won't let go, not now when Sam is determined to throw himself into a pit of fire and wind. Ruby isn't making a sound, but the air is screaming, whipping against the ground so swift and violent that Dean can see it, the twisting currents carrying debris. Castiel is up again and struggling against them, unable to get close. He lets out a cry, bird like and sharp -- a call for Ruby.

"Ruby! _Ruby!"_ Sam is sobbing now, clawing with utter need to get to his black heron, Dean incapable of saying anything until he _hears_ the snap, hears the storm increase in fervor, hears Sam make the most perfectly broken sound before going completely limp, Dean only just managing to catch his dead weight. Dean cries out automatically, the loss instant and so much worse than the house. Worse, maybe, even than their mother.

Dean can't bear to look away from his brother, but he does for a moment, only a second, to see Ruby's body dangling in the demon's hand, her wings limp and dragging against the ground, their shimmering beauty gone dull and dead.

Dean doesn't even know where to begin with that. Ruby is gone. Ruby is dead. His family and his little brother's other half.

And Dean knows it won't be but a moment more before he loses Sam as well. To madness, or suicide. Or to a lingering pall, slipping so slowly into death that Dean will have to watch him go pale and sallow, languish and decay while still living.

Dean knows that losing Castiel would tear him to shreds and he never loved the angel like Sam loved his demon.

"Sam," he breathes, looking down at the body in his arms, the boy's cheeks tacky with tears. He clutches Sam in close, as if the strength of his arms and the pressure of his embrace are enough to hold Sam together and keep him from falling apart, bleeding into the hole that Ruby has left inside of him.

A shadow falls over them and Dean flinches, looking up to see what he has to protect his brother from now, but it's just Cas, looking down with such indescribable pity. Dean has never seen that much emotion on his angel's face, but Dean's still scared. Because what if Cas only ever protected Sam and Ruby on Dean's orders? What if this moment, here, is what the supposed "good guys" were waiting for? One demon dead, and Dean's sweet natured little brother a vulnerable lump on death's doorstep.

Losing Castiel would tear Dean to shreds, but he'd kill the angel himself before he let Cas ever hurt Sam.

The trenchcoat swirls around them as Cas grasps both of them in his arms, even as the shockwave from the yellow-eyed man blows outward. There's a hum, something buzzing, like white noise vibrating in the air and Dean shuts his eyes tightly, clutching Sam like a security blanket, and then the Earth jolts.

The roaring train of the universe is barrelling towards them, and in one explosion of light and sound everything fades to silence, a deep ringing like an underwater explosion.

When Dean dares to open his eyes, they are in a field, somewhere far away.

The sun is shining and the wheat is waving back and forth, singing an Americana anthem to itself as the sheafs rustle against one another. In the distance there is a farmhouse, white with blue shutters and perfect looking, a child’s swing set in the yard. It’s like a shot from a propaganda video, like a slow mo from a Michael Bay movie saluting some simpler time, romanticizing over all the rust, all the bad parts.

It feels so terribly inappropriate for this. For Sam to die under a perfect, cloudless blue sky with the sounds of children laughing in the distance.

Dean is holding his little brother in his arms as Cas draws back. Sam is still limp, draped over one of Dean’s forearms with his head lolling back, hair so messy and all over the place, flopping down in obstinate curls and waves and it moves in the wind like the grass, shifting back and forth. Dean hears one of the far away children shriek with joy and the other yelling and he reaches up to touch Sam’s pale cheek.

“...Sammy,” he says, like his voice could reach the younger boy. Sam has lived through fractured ribs and bullet holes, concussions and supernatural infections, but Dean doesn’t even have the vocabulary to deal with the idea of losing half of yourself.

This loss is an existential kind of pain that he can’t imagine, can’t handle because he lives in the world of the physical, deals in the world of the physical. He hunts ghosts and wraiths but it’s with rock salt and sawed offs. He needs cold steel under his hands -- needs an engine or a machete, seeks pleasure in the feel of skin against his own, understands pain through blood and bone.

What Sam is experiencing now is something beyond all of that. Something that Dean can’t conceptualize because he’s never _felt_ his soul, never had any awareness of it at all -- so he can’t imagine what its pain would be like. Sam is severed. Severed in some deeper, more essential way than Dean can fix.

Not that he won’t try.

“Sammy!” He shakes his brother, gritting his teeth. They’ve come this far, through all of this, and Dean doesn’t care what anyone says, he’s not losing his brother. “Sammy! Pull it together. C’mon. I know--” He doesn’t know. “I know this sucks. I know it hurts, but you gotta get up, man.”

Sam groans, mumbles a sound. His arms move like noodles, shoulders jerking as his lips part. He lets out a soft little sob -- one that nearly breaks Dean’s heart.

“Sam...” Dean reaches up, smoothing his free hand over Sam’s forehead, brushing his hair back even though it’s not in his eyes, just to feel it, to feel the reality of it. His hand moves down to Sam’s jaw and then to his neck, tracing over the pulse point. If feels wrong, _disturbing,_ to see Sam like this -- without Ruby. To know that Sam hasn't just sent her home or to get something. To see Sam _without_ her. Truly and endlessly.

Dean feels the point of his own jaw go tense, anger and determination running through him. His head jerks up, looking accusingly at Cas, as if it’s his fault.

And maybe it is, Dean rationalizes.

“Do something!” he demands, head jerking up to look at Castiel, but the angel just shakes his head.

“What can we do?”

“Something! Anything!” Dean feels something heavy in his throat, something that makes him breathe out too hard and choke in on his next breath. “You did this. It’s _your_ fault. I told you--” Dean chokes. “I told you to _protect_ them!”

“I am--... I am sorry, Dean.”

“That's not good enough!” Dean accuses, feeling hot now, skin feeling aflame and his cheeks flushed, everything too much. Anger and rage blending swiftly with his on coming grief, Sam’s death not yet come to pass but still too real. “You hated her when she first showed up. You kept her from going to Sam! You always thought she was dangerous-- That Sam was dangerous. And now she's dead! She's dead and I-- Sam--”

It's hard to breathe. He hangs his head and remembers when he was small, remembers being tucked in the lee of their wings, Cas and Ruby both, and being certain that nothing could ever take them away from him. That he was safe to love them.

“...I wish I could have stopped it,” Cas says softly, and Dean knows it's true. For all Dean's anger, all his blame, Castiel had tried to save her. Dean's mind flashes to a memory of their wings brushing, their long necks twining. He remembers the way that Cas called for her.

The memory brings the pain fresh and Dean bares his teeth, not in aggression but in a whine, long and strangled -- in pain. He lowers his head, pressing his face into Sam’s neck. He can hear breath, can feel pulse, and he doesn’t understand why that can’t be enough. Why Sam isn’t _okay._ Everything is here, everything is in its place -- heart and lungs and kidneys, bones and insides. There’s no wounds, no holes, no danger at all. Everything is fine.

Except Ruby.

And Dean misses her, the beauty of her -- the beauty of Sam’s soul external to him, no stiff awkward angel but a dancing demon, swift and deadly, smart and wicked. He misses her sarcasm and her wit, misses her grating voice and her whaps on the head. He misses her annoying little kisses on the cheek and her devilish smile and he misses, aches for, already, the sight of her wings, midnight and raven.

Dean remembers the first day he saw her, perched in the kitchen window and looking for Sam. 

Dean remembers the night he asked Cas to let her stay, knowing only then that he wasn’t afraid of her. Knowing only that she was important. And even now he still knows so little -- only enough to know exactly what he’s lost.

Half of Sam. Half of everything that his brother is.

“...I do not hate them, no matter what you think,” Cas’s voice is lower now, both in tone and elevation. Dean doesn’t look up from where he’s buried away against Sam’s skin, doesn’t lift his head, but he can sense the angel close. “I knew that I should, when he was conceived, when I saw the asura in the window watching him. I knew then that somehow karmic cycle had gone wrong, done something awful, to place you two as brothers. But no matter what I knew, I could not hate him.”

Dean looked up slowly, feeling his eyes aching and rimmed, his lids half lowered and mouth open. He feels so much that he feels vacant, just trying to breathe, and he looks at Castiel’s face, trying to read the mystery there.

The angel wears no revelation, no great change, but there is a depth there that Dean is unused to, Castiel’s brow pinched and his eyes too heartfelt. Glassy.

“I am you. As you love him, so must I. There is nothing else I could do but this,” the angel says, clean and plain, his voice a roll of gravel as the wheat shifts and whispers, a waving susurrus of hollow blades.

For a second, Dean wants to ask Cas what the hell he means, what ‘this’ is, but he never gets a chance. The angel leans in and presses his lips to Dean’s forehead. Dean tries to flinch back, unaccustomed to such a display, especially from Cas, and whether or not the angel is his other half, it still feels weird -- but Castiel’s hand is on the back of Dean’s head, holding him place as he imparts the affection. He pulls back and Dean opens his mouth, gets out an aborted ‘what--’ before Cas is bending over, lifting Sam’s head.

Sam’s eyes open, whited out and glowing, leaking white ether, the pale mist drifting upwards on the breeze and Dean’s breath freezes in his throat. But then Cas kisses Sam’s forehead, the motion so weirdly intimate that it makes Dean uncomfortable -- that’s his soul kissing Sam and Cas has touched Sam before but not like this, not so _close._ Dean can feel it, the intensity of it echoing in his own lips, as if he is the one touching Sam’s skin.

And then he feels _so much more._

It’s too much and Dean blacks out. The last thing he sees are Sam’s eyes beginning to flare and then the light winks out.

And everything is dark.


	4. Born to Run

Sam wakes up in a field and knows that the world has changed.

He doesn't have to look or check, doesn't have to raise his head and prove with eyes or his ears or his hands. He knows it, even as his eyes blink slowly open, knows it the second that he sees the pale blue sky above him.

The world has been changed, irrevocably.

Ruby is gone.

Above him, a cloud is shifting through the sky, lazy and moved by a wind that Sam can't feel, the lightest of breezes stirring the wheat around him, the stalks dangling in arcs over his head. Sam can see the shadows on the underside of the cloud, outlining every random shape. The air is warm and pleasant, nothing but the rustle of the wheat to disrupt the peace, a white noise that lulls him.

Ruby is gone.

He drags in a breath, feeling strange, feeling new and old all at once, something altered and _wrong_ , something missing and filled in with something else, and feeling the most tenuous of connections to the world. He feels changed and drained, like someone stuck their hand into him, reshaped him without his permission. For three long minutes he just lays there, unmoving, his mind too consumed with images of fire and savagery, too filled with the raw loss to do anything but stare at the sky, so peaceful, so blasphemously peaceful in the face of all of Sam's pain.

When he puts his hands on the ground and pushes himself up, his stomach lurches, lungs threatening to rebel, to clamp down and force his muscles to retch, every organ in the wrong place. Every inch of him moved, shifted to some alien position. It feels like he's not in his own body.

"Are you alright?" Castiel's monotone voice asks, softer than usual, and Sam looks up, head pounding with a rush of blood. The angel is crouched, settled low but not sitting, always ready. His long white wings drag behind him, laid limp across the wheat. Sam has some errant desire to reach out and bury his fingers in the feathers, to remember the sensation, to cleave to the memory of Ruby's great ebony wings. Memory flashes to his youth, to teething on her feathers, to rubbing then against his lips and face like a security blanket, the only one he ever got to keep.

He huffs.

Not anymore.

Ruby is gone.

"I'm..." Sam starts, but there isn't a word. There are no words. He searches them, searches across the expanse of his mind but there's none that fit. No language in the history of the world was ever designed, was ever conceptualized, to contain this. To lose an essential, _axial_ part of himself. Pain is both too raw and too pale to apply, something too relegated to the physical, something too _mundane_ for what he's feeling. Numb is too bland, too easy, and a lie. He feels it, he _feels_ this, in the most intimate way the human soul was ever capable of feeling anything, but there's no word for it.

Sam is adrift.

He glances over, finding the body of his brother, but he doesn't check to see if he's alive. Sam just knows. He doesn't know how he knows, but he knows that Dean is alive. Dean is alright, just unconscious.

Sam looks back at Castiel and tries to summon the questions he knows he should be asking, _what happened, who was that, how, why,_ but his curiosity, usually so bright and prominent in his mind, feels flat. He can't find it, can't grasp it. All the long questions of his short life, his need to know, has gone -- evaporated like alcohol. He just plain _doesn't care_ about that now. He can't. 

Ruby is gone and he doesn't even know where to begin.

He and Castiel wait in silence, the both of them looking no where in particular while Dean lies on the dirt, the summer breeze shimmering through the wheat all around them. Sam doesn't know where they are, knows he should ask, but wherever it is, they're hidden from sight, camped out on some narrow pathway through the grain. All the same, Castiel is watchful. He always has been, but even more so now.

Now, when just a few hours ago they were attacked by a demon. A demon who called Sam _Lord._

Sam shudders and pulls his knees in tighter, tucking his nose in against the valley formed between them. The summer sun shines down on him, bright and yellow, but all Sam feels is cold.

"Mrg," is the first thing Dean says, coming around groggy and pushing himself up before he's even fully conscious. Sam wants to laugh at him, chuckle and push his over protective, over confident big brother back down. He wants to tell Dean to take it easy, to just lie there for a second. He wants to press a hand to his brother's cheek, brush his thumb against the scruff of his jaw.

Instead Sam just turns his head and watches.

"What the hell happened?" Dean asks, disoriented and lifting one hand to the side of his head, obviously dealing with one hell of a headache. Sam stares at him, taking him in and recognizing him, seeing every familiar feature but seeing him strange, seeing him miles away and incapable of touching.

After all, Dean doesn't instantly know what happened. He didn't open his eyes and know to the very core of himself that things will never be the same.

Dean still has Cas.

"You passed out," Castiel responds, pushing himself forward. He glances to Sam, as if expecting him to do something, but when Sam stays still the angel moves in, supporting Dean with one hand against his back, between his shoulderblades. "We should not linger here."

"Here?" Dean groans. "Where the hell is here?"

"I am not totally certain."

"You're not--" Dean starts incredulously, head jerking to the side to stare at Castiel, looking baffled. "What the hell, Cas? _Where are we?"_

"We are in a field of wheat. That is the extent of my knowledge."

"You're a crap angel, I--" Dean stops then, sudden and suddenly, his brow furrowed and Sam knows. He knows that Dean is remembering. It's coming back to him now, and any second-- "Shit."

"Shit, Sam," Dean says, looking up and over at Sam, concern in his eyes that Sam can't stand, can't stomach, and Sam turns his gaze away. He stares at the brown stalks of grain and wishes that Dean would just forget it, would just accept this cataclysm as a matter of course. Take this complete and utter schism of reality and shrug it off as nothing. It doesn't happen like that, of course.

"Sam--" Dean starts again, crawling towards him. "Are you--"

"We should move," Sam interrupts, uncertain where the words came from after such a long period of silence. He doesn't want to use them. Each one feels like too much effort, draining him.

He pushes himself to his feet stiffly.

"Whatever that was-- That demon," he clarifies, looking down at Dean. "If he found us once, he can find us again. We should get going, before someone finds us here."

"Sam..." Dean tries once more, and this isn't fair.

It isn't fair that for all the time Sam wanted to talk, all the times he pushed, all the times he wanted to see into his brother and understand him, all the times he'd desperately needed Dean to listen, to hear him, now is when Dean wants to talk. Now, when Sam barely has enough breath just to keep breathing.

Sam purses his lips and looks up, across the surface of the grain, shifting in wave patterns, back and forth. In the distance he can see a house with a blue roof and he latches onto the excuse, flimsy as it is.

"We're on someone's property. A farm or something. We should get out of here before we're noticed." He doesn't wait for a confirmation. Instead he turns to walk by Dean and Castiel, following the path in the grain. He's not entirely certain where the road is from here, but they'll figure it out. Hop a car or a truck and go as far as they can in any direction, a flashback to four years ago, and the thought almost makes Sam want to laugh, if he could only summon the energy.

They're back here. Running, again. Two lost boys on the American highway, and Sam wonders where they'll call home next.

Or if such a place even exists.

He pauses a few feet down, looking back at the two of them, seeing Castiel push himself to his feet, wings shuffling, big and broad -- so much broader than Ruby's, all muscle and brute strength. In a flash, Sam remembers his black bird, her wily grace, her slender wings and powerful talons. He sucks in a breath and tries to push it away, not ready to see that, to deal with it.

"You coming?" he grits out. He's only half aware of his fingers curled into fists. He feels taut, wound too tight and at the same time unloosed. He doesn't know what to do with himself, doesn't know what to do with his body. He doesn't know how to _exist_ like this.

For a second, Dean just kneels there in the dirt, looking over at him. Sam wants to feel bad. He knows he should. He knows his brother is trying to reach out to him. He knows he should be responding, shouldn't leave Dean hanging like this but he just can't. He can't and he doesn't even know how to feel bad about it right now.

But Dean seems to understand, or at least accept, pushing himself to his feet. Without any further words they began to make their way through the grain, walking down the thin pathways woven into the field, Sam taking the lead. He doesn't know where he was going, didn't know where the path led, to the road or further in. He doesn't know what they'll do when they find the road -- pick a car, going either way, the first one they see and just keep going. His brain can't think past that, keeps clicking and whirring like a broken machine, processing only what he can see in front of him, unable to handle anything else.

He walks through the grain, feeling short of breath. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.

Ruby is gone.

Ruby is gone.

He murmurs it to himself, a constant repetition, a reminder he doesn't need. He feels it. Every second. Every heartbeat.

Ruby is gone.

\-----

When they finally get to a road, it's pretty deserted. Wherever they are, it's nowhere near civilization.

The good news is that people this far out are more likely to stop for hitchhikers.

Sam lets Dean pick a direction and they make their way down the side of the two lane highway, each horizon the same as the last. Castiel flies along above them, his long white body cutting through the crazy blue sky, broad wings spread wide like a cloud that hung too low. 

Sam can feel Dean's eyes flicking to him, each time wanting to talk, to try and start the conversation that Sam won't have, but Sam just looks determinedly onward, unwilling to confront what happened.

Eventually, a man in a pick up truck passes them, slowing down to pull over into the ditch. Dean runs forward, Sam keeping his pace. He doesn't listen as Dean spins some story for why they're out here, where they need to go, which is pretty much anywhere not here at this point. Dean pats his hand against the ledge of the open window when they're invited in, pulling open the door and slipping inside, scooting over to leave room for Sam.

Sam shuts the door behind him, feeling the pick-up rumble as they pull back out onto the road. He leans his elbow against the door, looking out to the long fields of grain as they roll on by, mile after mile.

It turns out they’re in Iowa, which is pretty crazy given that they were in California not two hours ago. The driver(Kenny) drops them off at the local gas station and there’s still nothing for miles. Dean picks up a map, scouring over it while Sam leans himself against the window, looking out at the never-ending flatness. He bites at his lip, and in his reflection on the glass he keeps seeing Ruby's face, keeps imagining it where it is not, keeps trying to imagine what she must have looked like in that moment.

But all he can recall is the back of her head, the low arch of her wings, and the snap of bone.

He feels Castiel's hand slide over his shoulder from behind and Sam's eyes drift shut. It's strange, foreign to feel Cas reach out for him. Cas wasn't warm with Dean, not the way Sam and Ruby were, but it's somehow easier to accept right now than Dean. Dean's eyes beg for Sam, search for him. Cas asks for nothing.

Sam leans his forehead against the glass, warm in the late afternoon sun, and pretends that the wings behind him are black as ash.

"There's a town twenty miles east of here," Dean announces as they make their way out of the gas station. "Clerk says there's a motel there. We'll at least be able to get some beds for the night. Recoup."

He finishes with a shrug, knowing full well that there's no recouping from this. It's like the morning their father tried to kill Sam, but more indelible. Something that can't be undone. Something that can't be lived with.

If he is honest with himself, Sam isn't even sure why he is alive anymore. He doesn’t know _how_ he is alive anymore.

They manage to get a ride over to Keota, a tiny spit of a town, like any of the hundreds that he and Dean have seen before. Dean picks a couple of pockets to get them some cash before shepherding them into the motel, and Sam feels more tired than he realized, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. Part of him just wants to go to sleep, to pass out and be unconscious and unthinking, ignorant of the world around him.

But he's pretty sure his vindictive brain would make him dream.

"Right, so," Dean says, once the door is shut, once they're all packed into some motel in the middle of Iowa with no idea how they got there. He's trying to organize, trying to keep them together. Trying to lead them like he always has.

"I don't even know where to _start,"_ he continues, leaning back against the door. He looks over at Castiel, standing over in the middle of the room, watchful as ever but with an edge of lost, out of his depths in a way he is unaccustomed to.

"...He has to tell us," Sam says quietly, looking at his brother's guardian but speaking to Dean. "I can't just--... He has to tell us. No more waiting. He has to tell us what's happening."

There's a pause, a hang of silence in the room, but Sam isn't asking for this. That time has passed. He stares at Castiel, unwavering, and the angel will tell him. Sam will know the reason, the cause, behind the violence of his life, the violence his existence has visited upon his family since he was six months old. There's still a part of him that doesn't want to know anymore, a part of him that wants to ignore it, look away from it, to somehow pretend that this hasn't happened and Ruby is still out there.

He doesn't have that luxury, though.

He doesn't look at Dean, but Castiel does, and it takes Dean a moment, but he adds:

"Can't keep going like this, dude." Dean's voice is rough, pulled from him, and he shrugs a little. "I thought we could just ignore it. Thought if we ran far enough, hid good enough, we could just-- I thought if I didn't look at it head on then maybe it'd cease to exist. I was wrong. Sam was right. And now Ruby's--"

"It's not your fault," Sam hisses suddenly, hands twisting in the coverlet.

"Sam--"

 _"No."_ Sam swallows hard, looking at the floor. "I can't--It can't--...It's not your fault. I can't deal with you taking this right now, Dean. Don't--...Don't make this about you."

Because that's what this would do. It would be Dean taking Ruby's death on as his, making it about his guilt and his grief, and Sam can't handle that. He can't handle the idea of Dean being to blame for this. Sam needs someone to hate right now and it can't be Dean.

He'd fall apart.

The room is silent, seconds ticking by like water, before Castiel speaks, his voice slow, almost hesitant, and all around them, Iowa is sunny and silent.

"I...cannot tell you these things," the angel says, but he doesn't sound even half so certain as he usually does.

"Cas--" Dean starts, angry.

"You do not understand, Dean. This was my charge. My duty. To tell you is to risk everything." He shakes his head. "I do not know who it was at the house. I do not know his intentions. But he broke every law that has existed in the last ten thousand years, between my people and Ruby's."

Sam can't help it. He flinches at the sound of her name. It's a hollow reminder, ringing, echoing in the space she used to fill. That she isn't there seems impossible, a physical warping of the world that seems like it should break it, like living without a heart. Like breathing without air.

"I'm not my father's little toy soldier anymore," Dean says, low, determined. "And Sam's right. You have to tell us. Whatever happens now... It's going to happen, one way or the other. That... _thing_ is after us and he's not going to stop until he gets what he wants. And we're not going to know how to deal with this unless you give us some kind of clue." Dean's hands fist at his sides. "It's not gonna work with you playing gatekeeper. Ruby died, just like that. What if you're next?" 

Dean raises his gaze from the carpet and continues:

"I need you to tell me. _We_ need you to tell us. What the _hell_ is going on?"

Sam's eyes tick up, trace the light that lands on Castiel's shoulders, the ridge of his wings, both of them pulled tight to his body. He looks tired in a way that Sam didn't think was possible, didn't think could happen to angels. Cas and Ruby never slept, never ate, never aged. They were eternal, like stone, and seemingly just as indestructible. 

It had been a lie, like so much else.

Now Sam sees the doubt in Castiel's expression. His hesitance, his worry. Whatever this duty was, whatever orders he was working from, the situation had changed too much. Too many variables in the equation.

It still takes the angel a moment to find his voice, to overcome however many centuries of devotion that had come before them.

"...We have not always existed," he starts, reticence in his tone. "But we have existed far longer than man. My people -- and Ruby's. And for as long as we have been we have been at war."

His expression becomes tenser, lips pressing together. He glances over towards the window and his wings become the sunlight, until they have faded to nothing, just a humanoid body that anyone else would think human -- if they could ever see him at all.

"We've gone by many names," he continues. "Today it is 'angel' and 'demon.' But the first names, the ones that humans first gave us, were deva and asura." He shrugs. "I am not sure if there is a word that we use for our kind. There is just _us_ and there is _them."_

"The asura," Dean fills in. Castiel nods.

"You didn't _seem_ at war," Sam points out. Sure, Ruby and Castiel hadn't always been best friends, but they'd worked together. They were family.

"You didn't see them at first," Dean replies, looking over at Sam. "When you were born, Cas wouldn't let Ruby near the house."

"You _what?"_ Sam stands up, anger lancing through him immediately. He doesn't know what he'll do -- it's not like punching Cas is going to have any damned effect, but just the idea makes him angry. The idea of someone keeping his black heron from him.

"You must understand," Cas replies, some of that infuriating calm broken as he looks over at Sam, something almost like grief there. "I had no background for this. No training. I was meant to protect Dean and an asura was attempting to come close to him. Our people have been in conflict long before my birth. It is eternal. I had no choice but to defend against what I _thought_ was an attack."

"So what changed your mind?" Sam asks, still feeling on edge.

"Dean." Castiel looks down at the carpet. "And the realization of what you were."

Sam anger is snuffed out then, vanishes like smoke in the wind, replaced by ice, body running cold. He doesn't ask the question. He can't decide if he needs to know or if he wants to run away, run out the door and just keep going and never know about himself whatever it is that his father saw.

No one says anything for a moment. No one asks. They don't have to. 

Castiel looks up, over at them.

"Ten thousand years ago the asuras and the devas both sought soma -- the elixir of immortality. More than that. The essence of godhood. Whoever drank of it would become a god on par with the three gods that ruled all matter that was. The god of the devas, the Creator, the god of the humans, the Maintainer, and the god of the asuras...the Destroyer."

He looks straight at Sam when he says it and Sam drops back down to the edge of the bed, uncertain of what that means.

"So I'm... _what?_ Some...god of death?"

Castiel nods, but continues before Sam can even find the breath to take that in.

"In our search for soma, though, in our hubris... We dredged the oceans and found only poison. The poison of human karma." He shakes his head. "It would have killed us, deva and asura alike. It _was_ killing us. But our gods, the two dual sides of life and death, made a pact. They were eternal adversaries, always dancing together with knives at each other's throat, but--... They made a pact. To save all of us, they drank the poison that was killing the world, and for that, they entered the human cycle of reincarnation."

He goes silent after that, as if that explains everything, as if that's enough. It's Dean that speaks up first.

"Please," he scoffs. "You're saying we're _gods?_ We're two reincarnated gods?"

"You were never meant to be born into the same family," Castiel says by way of reply, confirming without ever having to speak the words, and his voice is so weak and lost. It's some kind of flimsy defense.

Sam lifts his hands to cover his face, eyes closing. He can see the purplish bursts of pressure, as if he can rub this away like sleep, see clearly again. He'd wondered what he was, what was in him so awful that his own father thought he was better off dead. But it wasn't _him_ that his father had been thinking about at all. It had been the world.

A god of destruction. If what Cas said was true, Sam's potential for devastation could be awful, could be enough to--... To what? End the world? That seemed implausible, seemed like too much. He was just a man. A _boy._ Even ignoring the fact that he'd never had any such urge, how could he have a power like that and not _feel_ it? He'd never exhibited any kind of power at all, let alone something so catastrophic.

If it was true, though, if Castiel was _right_... Then John's impulse hadn't been as severe as Sam had once thought.

If Sam was that much of a threat, then maybe death was better.

"Thus began the age of the Maintainer," Cas spoke again, soft in the quiet. Sam didn't look up. "For ten thousand years we have been at peace. Or...we have been truced. For ten thousand years, in the wake of the death of our gods, the asuras and the devas ceased their violence. Once, we waited for your return. Your revival. We waited, knowing that you would rise again." He hears the direction of Castiel's voice change to Dean. "You were a god. There was no way you could be gone _forever_."

Sam slowly lowers his hands, looking up to see Castiel turn to face the both of them, leaning his hips back against the dresser, a motion so almost human that it's jarring. It doesn't seem like the stiff man that Sam grew up watching, grew up knowing.

"But time had passed. Things had changed. So long as you both were no longer in the heavens, peace remained on Earth. The truce remained and no one wanted to break it. There was no way to know if or when one or both of you would awaken, when you would come tearing back to burning divinity. If it was ours," he glances to Dean, "then we would triumph over the asuras. But if it was you..." His eyes turn to Sam. He shakes his head. "We couldn't take the risk, and the asuras wouldn't either. A...system, of sorts, was created. A way to keep you both trapped in the cycle and keep the age of the Maintainer endless."

"You and Ruby?" Sam asks softly, knowing enough to connect that. His brain feels like its running on empty, running on fumes. He's not tired, not hungry, but he's _weary_ , worn out. He can't imagine the horror of living the rest of his life like this -- waking up every morning to a new reminder. His eyes would always search for that which was meant to be there. That which would never be there.

"We are garuda...were garuda. Divine messengers." Cas knits his fingers together, looking down as he lets them hang over the flaps of his trenchcoat. "I am a deva and she was an asura... For so many life times our kinds have stepped in, manipulated your fate without your consent or knowledge. Each time you die, each time you move on to the next life... We step in. The asuras take Sam-- Or, what _would_ be Sam. We take Dean. What would be Dean. A deva will consume half of our god's soul and an asura will consume half of the other. So long as we exist, we are capable of keeping each of the great aspects from realizing itself."

"How?" Dean's brow furrows.

Castiel looks up.

"If one of the gods begins to awaken, they would be unstoppable. Unkillable," he says. "But a garuda such as myself... My people could kill me. As half of your soul passes on to the next mortal life, so would rest of you, pulling you with me. We represent a failsafe system."

"And you would volunteer for that?!" Dean throws his arms out to either side, disbelief written across his features, but Sam doesn't give Castiel the chance to reply to that. He has a more pressing question.

"Ruby's dead," he starts, then stops. The words stop his throat, the rest of the question strangling into silence. It's the first time he's said them. The first time he's acknowledged aloud what happened. What he's lost. He has to take a breath, has to breathe through it, and when he tries again his voice is like gravel. "...Ruby's dead. And I'm still here. If she was meant to make everything failsafe... If her death was meant to drag me into the next life, why'm I still alive? And why would another _asura_ kill her?"

Talking about it feels like dragging himself over hot coals. He doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to talk about it or hear it. But he owes Ruby more than this, more than cowardice in the face of her death, when she had so unflinchingly faced her own for his sake.

"I..." Cas starts and that lost look returns to him, confusion knitting his brow as he shakes his head. "I do not know why what happened happened. I don't know why any of us would risk all out war again. But... When I moved us here, away from the danger, I knew that Dean--"

He stops, pauses. His eyes search the lines of the room, as if looking for words, and no one interrupts his quest.

"...No," he finally says, interrupting himself. "It wasn't that. I _wanted_ to save you. I did not want to see you die. So I did the only thing I could think of. I bound myself to you."

"What?!" Dean demands, though Sam isn't sure about what. Castiel hasn't even defined what that _means_ yet.

"I thought that perhaps--" Castiel shrugs his broad shoulders, a strangely graceful motion on his form. "I hoped that it would be possible for both of you to share a section of soul. That it would be enough to hold Sam here."

"And what if it wasn't?"

"...I don't know." Cas looks straight at Dean, his expression almost pitiful. "I don't know what I'm thinking anymore, Dean. Once...Once I knew. Once, everything was perfectly clear. But ever since you stopped me from entering the nursery, ever since you asked me to let her sing...I have doubted. Again and again, I have doubted. One by one I have taken steps, each one so seemingly small, off of my path. And each one seemed so insignificant, like it could make so little difference. But now I look back and I cannot even see the path anymore. I knew when I was honored with the chance to guard you, to carry the divine, that it would change me. But I did not think like it would be like _this_."

He shakes his head again, looking so strangely mortal, the angel, the _deva_ fled, and leaving a confused man in its place, looking desperately for answers in a motel carpet.

"No one has ever come to tell me why this happened,” he continues. “What I should do. When I realized who Sam was, what had happened, I was certain that someone would come to give me guidance but... The asura. The deva. They have left this world. Their concerns are elsewhere and I don't-- I don't know what to do." He shuts his eyes. "I could only come to the conclusion that I should follow the orders of our god-- of you," he says, looking up to look at Dean, pathetic and hopeful at once. "And you told me that we were...family. I saw Sam dying. I did not think. I only acted."

After that, Cas falls silent and doesn't speak again. There's more to the story, Sam knows. There's more details, more nuance, but Cas has told them what he knows, has told them the backbone of it, and Sam sees a bit now what Dean meant. The truth is the truth, of course, cannot be changed, but Sam misses the ignorance of only ten minutes ago.

He misses more the ignorance of knowing what a world without his other half was like.

Some quarter of Dean's soul seems to be enough to hold him here, enough to sustain him, but he wonders if maybe this is why he feels so weary. He shuts his eyes, as if rest in any form could fix what is broken in him.

What is missing.

"Christ, there's so--" Dean starts, then runs a hand through his hair, stopping on the back of his head. "...I don't know what to say to half of that. I don't know if I _believe_ half of that."

"It is the only truth I know to tell you, Dean," Castiel replies and it sounds like an apology.

"Ruby wanted to tell us," Dean says. He sounds a little choked. "She wanted to--...She changed her mind. About the asuras or gods or whatever."

"She believed that it was wrong to leave you in the dark. We had gone so long without contact from our people, from those who gave us our orders and sent us here. I believed that that didn't matter. That our duty remained. But Ruby... She believed that we served you two. And only you two." Castiel's eyes flick away, uncomfortable, almost fearful. "But it was believed that if you knew the truth, that if we triggered some memory, you would ascend. It risked everything."

Dean's arms go out to either side.

"Well, I don't see any ascending happening here," he says.

"You didn't _want_ to know," Castiel point out, a little desperately.

"I didn't know I needed to!" Dean yells back, but it doesn't take him but a heartbeat to look contrite. Guilty. "...I should have asked. I should have listened to Sam. I should have--... Goddamnit. I listened to Dad, believed him, and I saw where that got me and then I did it _all over again_." He shakes his hand, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. Fucking hell..."

Sam looks down, tugs on his sleeves. He sees motes of dust floating in the late afternoon light, drifting by. He doesn't see how the knowledge would have helped anyway. Maybe they could have run, maybe they could have hidden away and hoped for the best, but the truth was they'd thought they _were_ hidden. They'd thought they were safe. And the truth was...

Well.

The truth was that Sam was too dangerous to live anyway. He wants to talk to Ruby so badly. He wants her comfort right now, her guidance. He remembers how she'd taught him to ride a bike, promising to hold it up only to let him go careening down a hill, so he had no choice but to balance. He remembers how she'd helped him climb trees, always fluttering out of reach and goading him on, teasing him until he was too mad to cry and scrambled up after her. He remembers the times he leaned against her and listened to her advice, bad as it always was -- telling him to beat up bullies and curse out his teachers, telling him to flick off his dad. He almost laughs at the thought.

She was always so shit at comfort.

He still wishes she were here to give it, to give him her spectacularly bad advice.

"Okay," Dean says finally, taking a breath. "Alright. Well, regardless of...all the rest, we've still got some psycho demon-- asura, whatever, on our tail, and we don't know why. That's gotta be our priority. We can deal with the whole gods and legends thing when we're safe. Cas, you really don't know anything about him?"

The angel shakes his head.

"He is an asura and he is very old," he says. "That is all I could tell. He is older than me by far, perhaps as old as the dredging of the milk ocean. Whoever he is, he has been hidden from sight for a very long time."

"Great. Okay. Well...then we run. He said he found us because we stayed put -- then maybe Dad had the right idea. Well. About moving around I mean. If we just keep on the move, he might not be able to get a lock on us--"

"No," Sam interrupts, the word out before he's even though it. It's quiet, soft, not half as determined as he thinks it needs to be, but its there anyway.

"Sam?" Dean asks, and it takes only that for Sam to know exactly what Ruby's terrible advice would be. She'd never run from a fight, not unless Sam made her. Every time he'd apologized, every time he'd tried to make amends, she'd been the one championing the 'kick his ass' plan. Ruby would have fought Hell itself, alone and out numbered, just for the thrill of it.

Ruby would want blood.

"He killed her," Sam replies, voice finally harder, gritty through the anger. "He _killed_ her. I'm not going to run away from him."

"Sam, we don't have a choice, we don't _know_ anything--"

"Then we figure it out, Dean." Sam stands up from the bed, turning to look at both of them, at his brother and the angel currently keeping him alive. "That's what we do. What we've always done. We research, we look it up. We figure it out. And then we hunt the bastard down."

"Hunting, Sam? Really?" Dean shakes his head. "You hate hunting. You've always hated it."

"Well not anymore! He killed her, Dean. I'm not going to run away and hide and just ignore that!"

"I'm not asking you to ignore it, I'm asking you to just... _think_ about this. What you're saying isn't smart. Charging into certain death-- You really think that Ruby would have wanted that for you?"

Sam huffs a little, the smile on his lips mirthless -- fond, but full of pain.

"...I think it's _exactly_ what she would have wanted."

"Sam..."

"He deserves to die for what he did. I don't _care_ who he is. He killed Mom. He killed Ruby." The anger is so hot, so intense, Sam's almost shaking with it. He feels so damned impotent here, standing around in some motel room, the yellow-eyed demon holding all the cards, all the power. Sam wants to steal it back. He wants to throw it in his face. "I'll kill him myself."

It's a promise, a vow, and he looks up at Dean, whose expression has shifted to hardened, halfway between disbelief and sadness. 

"You sound like _Dad_ , Sam," he says quietly.

"Maybe Dad was right."

"Maybe Dad was-- Sam! He tried to _kill_ you!" Dean thrusts a hand out, enraged by the notion.

"Were you listening?!" Sam screams, voice tearing with absolute pain, absolute agony and anger and despair. "I'm some kind of monster, Dean! I'm a monster who could end the world! I'm more dangerous than anything we've ever hunted before and maybe Dad was right then too! I should have--" He chokes on a sob. "I should have died with her. I should have died then and--"

"Don't you say that. Don't you dare say that."

"But I _didn't_ ," Sam continues, shaking himself. He takes a deep breath. "And if I'm still alive...then it's to hunt that thing down. If I survived...its to get vengeance for Ruby. I'm going to kill that son of a bitch."

Dean's looking at him hard, hurt and anger in his gaze, and Sam knows, knows in an intellectual sense, that he should feel bad. He should _feel_ something. Dean's his brother. Dean's his family. Dean's the guy he's been in love with for the last four years -- more than that, if he's being honest with himself. But Dean's the guy that Sam's been in a relationship with that defies every possible moral and law and taboo, broken through all of them, to be together.

He loves Dean. It's unquestionable.

But Sam feels nothing.

Nothing besides the aching need to kill the man that killed him -- the monster that killed his beautiful black garuda. All he has left to run on is the anger and if he lets that go, he's honestly not certain what will happen. He's not sure if there's anything left under the anger to hang on to and he doesn't want to let go and find out that it's nothing. 

Sam knows its not fair to Dean, not even remotely. If Sam hadn't been born into Dean's family, they might have had a perfectly normal life. Their mom would never have died and their father wouldn't have gone off the deep end. Dean would have grown up in a house, not on the road, would have finished high school, maybe gone to college. He would have had friends and birthdays and Christmases. He would have had girlfriends. Maybe he would have had other siblings. He would have had a life.

Sam wishes he could just leave. He wishes he could take this on as the punishment he deserves and leave Dean out of it. Whatever violent end comes for him, whatever foolishness he indulges in in his quest for revenge, he wishes he could keep it on himself alone, but the fact of the matter is that Dean wouldn't let him. Even if Sam left, Dean would just chase him down.

Dean always does.

"...I'm doing this, Dean," Sam says, quieter, resolute.

Dean swallows and looks to the side, too many emotions on his face to be any one thing. He purses his lips and he looks...defeated. And Sam only hates himself more that he's the one to put it there.

\-----

Everything between them is stilted after that. Thrown off. They go to bed, sleep in the same bed, as always, but Sam doesn't reach for Dean. He feels too separate, too alone for that. He's exhausted, but finding sleep is a trial. Every time he drifts off he jerks back awake with the fresh realization that she's not there, that he's broken.

He thinks he can feel something -- something in the space she used to take up, something holding him here, a barely there tether. He imagines it must be Castiel, must be his connection to Dean and Cas and the soul they're now sharing. Sam thinks it should make him feel closer, but it doesn't. It just makes him curl up tighter, makes him try to think of something, anything, that isn't this pain, this loss.

But it's like his mind can't turn to anything else, a machine trapped in a loop.

The next five days are filled with a series of hitchhiked rides and small talk, punctuated by walking and awkward silence. At first Dean appeals to Castiel about the apparent teleportation to Iowa, but the angel shakes his head. It had been an emergency. The reason that Cas had never done it before, back when they were hitchhiking to Stanford or sometime before that, was that he'd been ordered to interfere with Dean's life as little as possible. And now, with the eyes of the world searching for them, the more Castiel used his powers the more noticeable they would become.

So they were back to hitchhiking. Lost boys once more.

Given how uncomfortable things are between them, it's not surprising how eagerly Dean approaches the civvies. It's a break, Sam knows, a reprieve from the silence and the gloom. Dean's always been good at this part, anyway. Sam's better at lying, but Dean likes it more. He’s been doing it since forever, and he falls into it as easy as breathing. 

Sam’s always hated it, hated not having his own real identity he can talk about, but Dean loves the ability to reinvent himself wherever he goes. He gets to cut out all the bad parts of their life, the things he doesn't like, gets to pretend away all the crap and instead pick up something new. Sometimes he’s a novelist, traveling around looking for the next great American novel. Sometimes he’s a baseball player, almost got into the Major League, yes sir, but then took a hard knock to the knee, this knee right here, ended my career. Sometimes he’s an Olympic athlete, or a door to door salesman, sometimes he’s road crew for Styx or Zepp. Sometimes, when he’s feeling maudlin, he’s a foster kid, real tough luck tale, but things are gonna turn themselves around and he believes it.

When he tells the stories, they almost seem real and sometimes Sam almost believes them. He wants to. He wants to sink into the comfort of them. In those stories they aren't Winchesters. They aren't lonely men that rode the American blacktop, searching for their death on the highway and inviting it to take their lives. They aren't aimless, wandering nomads, aren't pickpockets and thieves. They never had to lose their mom, lose their dad. They aren't two boys losing every little thing, one piece at a time, and clinging to the last little edge they can find. 

For a day, or an hour, or just a few minutes, they count. People look at them as see _people_ , not ghosts, not freaks.

It's not as easy to fall into the fantasy now. The absence of Ruby is a constant, throbbing ache, and he can't stop looking for her. Her presence has always been eternal, as expected as the sky, and to suddenly have her gone shocks him at every minute. He can't get over it because he can't even accept the concept. The very idea that she's gone, not just away, that she'll _never_ be back, not ever, is too twisted to look at. An idea built from non-euclidean geometry and an impossible sight.

Sam leans his head on the window and looks out as if all the world's a rainstorm. He doesn't know how he can get over this if he can't even accept that it happened.

Over the course of their nowhere trip, their aimless running down to Missouri, Dean tries to reel him in. In diners or motels, on the side of the road or curled up in their bed, Dean reaches for him, tries to pull him back. But Sam can't. He just can't. If he lets himself feel this, if he feels it at all, he thinks he'll cease to be. He can't do what he needs to do and be what Dean needs at the same time. All he can do is pack himself away, barricade himself in, and pray that Dean can forgive him when the violence is done.

He shuts his eyes and lets the days slip past him, wind drifting through him, sunlight shining through him, the whole of him empty and vapid.

He shuts his eyes and thinks of Ruby and every minute had and every minute lost.

They run in the millions.

One day he falls asleep against the window of a station wagon and dreams of her body, sees it lying in the dust and the ash, broken and bloodied and abandoned. He sees the firefighters walking around her, over her, unable to see her and standing on her wings. He wakes with a jerk, the pain flashing through him like acid in his veins and for a moment he can't move, can't breathe. He almost chokes on it, almost loses every little semblance of control he's built and gives in, sobs his grief until he can't anymore. He almost loses it completely before he's able to pull in one ragged breath and tamp it down again. 

If he cries, if he lets himself feel this at all, he'll feel everything, until he's overflowing with it.

He'll lose the cold calm, this impavid rage, and it'll be over before it starts. Ruby's death will go unavenged.

It's that evening that he brings it up again.

"We need to go to Blue Earth," he announces, apropos of nothing, him and Dean sitting around some not particularly great Thai food, cartons set out on the cheap, particle board table. Outside it's raining and dark, cars rushing through the puddles and their headlights flashing like stars through the drops on their motel window. Castiel is standing out on the portico, staring at nothing -- waiting for some ill defined threat that's waiting out there for them somewhere.

"What?" Dean asks, looking up from his pad thai, plastic fork sticking out the carton.

"Blue Earth," Sam repeats, turning his gaze away from Castiel, from the way the florescent light lands on the angel's wings, and looks at his brother seriously. "We have to go and see Pastor Jim."

"Um," Dean replies, brow furrowed like Sam is nuts. "Think you're forgetting a little detail there, Sammy. Jim knows Dad. And Dad knows Jim. We go there, there's no way Dad won't find us."

"I'm not forgetting anything. The Pastor's the only one with the kind of collection we need. If we're going to figure out who this demon is, we're not going to be able to do it alone. The kinds of books we need, they're not going to be in any library, big or small. To hunt this thing...we're gonna need hunter's resources."

Dean snorts at that but replies:

"Putting aside the fact that I think hunting this is iffy to begin with...I'm still not taking you to Jim's. I'm not gonna risk that, Sam."

Sam heats up at that, shoulders squaring, and he can see that exasperated, resigned expression on Dean's face -- the look he gets when he knows that Sam's made up his mind but thinks that whatever he's made his mind up _about_ is stupid.

"Well, I didn't _ask_ you to take me there, Dean. I'm going to Jim's. He's--...He won't sell us out to Dad." Sam struggles not to soften at that, remembering evenings spent down in the basement of the church, Pastor Jim teaching him to read Latin, letting him struggle through each word and praising him with the same tired, kind smile that he always wore. He remembers the Pastor teaching him to pray, remembers when he showed Sam the beautiful collection of old illuminated Bibles he had. 

Jim understood books like Sam did. Jim understood Sam like Sam's father never had.

He hasn't seen the man in years but he can't believe that Jim would betray them.

"You can't know that and I won't risk it," Dean repeats, but holds up a hand just as Sam is about to interject. "But I didn't say that there's not another option. Look, I understand why you gotta do this. I understand and I feel it too -- that bastard took Mom. And now--" He shakes his head, looking down at the table. "...She wasn't mine. Ruby, I mean. She wasn't my...other half, or whatever. But she was family. And...I'm sorry if I haven't been totally on board with you. It's just...I watched Dad get sucked into this, man. I watched him lose himself until he couldn't even see his own kids anymore. I don't want that for you."

He looks up again and continues:

"You've always been my priority, Sam. My number one. But if this is what you need to do, then I'm gonna have your back, okay?"

Sam looks away, feeling heavy, feeling guilty, but he nods.

"Okay?" Dean asks again, pressing for the words.

"...Okay," Sam replies, looking back at his brother, swallowing hard. He feels it. That tightness. The inching reach of love, burning and buried but still there. His fingers curl slowly against the table and a car rushes by outside. He takes a deep breath.

"Okay," Dean continues, more firmly. "So...Jim's out. Caleb too. But that doesn't mean that we don't have options." He pauses, stuffing a forkful of noodles into his mouth before setting the carton down, leaning back in his chair as he chews. "I've been thinking... Jim and Caleb were practically the only people who'd take Dad's calls there, by the time we left. Jim's a damned saint and Caleb's a crazy hick that lives barricaded in his basement of guns, so that's not sayin' a lot. Even Jefferson was screening Dad by that point, and it's not like that's the total hunting population out there."

"How the hell do we _find_ anyone else?" Sam asks, brow knit. He knows there's plenty of hunters out there, but aside from not really having permanent addresses, they're a secretive and paranoid lot. It's not exactly easy to get in contact with them at random.

"Well, I was thinking. Back when we were little, I dunno if you'd remember, there was this guy that Dad went to once or twice. Was an expert on demons. Except Dad pissed him off, just like you'd expect, and the guy threatened him with a shotgun, told him to never darken his doorstep again." Dean leans an elbow on the table. "After that, we never went back."

"I don't remember this," Sam says, brow furrowed. He searches his memory, for all the shacks and cellars and cabins they dropped by in his childhood, all the strange and half-dangerous men and women they met. 

"I'm not surprised." Dean shrugs. "You were like four the last time we were there. The guy had a scrap yard. Big ol' rottie. Hunter's name was Bobby Singer."

Sam perks up.

"I remember the dog!" He remembers being overwhelmed by the damned thing. It had been almost twice his size and bowled him over. He'd loved animals as a kid and so rarely gotten the chance to interact with any. It had been great to play with the rottweiler.

He pauses though, when he remember Ruby hopping around on her taloned claws nervously, uncertain if Sam's shrieks of laughter had been something else, the dog looming over him and licking his face.

"Yeah, well... It's been a few years. Don't think the dog'll still be around," Dean replies, tapping his fingers absently on the table. "But Singer... He was an expert on demons. Even better, Dad'd never think to look for us there. It was nearly eighteen years ago and they parted on just about as bad terms as two men can."

"Where is he?" Sam asks.

"South Dakota, I think." Dean shrugs a little helplessly. "I'm going on an address that's been scratched out in the journal for almost two decades now so... I figure, even if he's not there anymore, it's somewhere to go, keep the yellow-eyed bastard off of our scent."

It's as good a plan as any, and Dean's right -- if nothing else, it gives them somewhere to go. Better than just swimming in circles through the Midwest, aimless and adrift. And if the address is still good, then it could be the only person outside of Blue Earth with a collection worth a damn. Sam can't help the little swoop of disappointment that they won't be going to the church, to the only real home they've ever had. To see the only man who'd ever cooked them pancakes in the morning and helped them with homework. It makes Sam's stomach feel sour to think of Pastor Jim betraying their trust, but he knows the priest wouldn't see it that way. He'd think that he could reconcile them and John. He'd think he could fix things and nothing Dean and Sam could say would sway his optimism, nothing until John came in the door, shotgun loaded.

Sam swallows.

"...South Dakota it is, then," he says.

They're going on less than nothing at this point. If Singer can at least give them a direction, Sam will count it as a win.

\-----

Sam has lived around hunters his entire life.

He knows them, knows their world, better than he understands normal. For all his desire to seek out a safer, quieter life, the honest truth is that he fit in there just as oddly as he did in the life of a hunter. The only difference is that as a hunter, he knows what he's doing wrong.

He knows their customs, their preferences. He knows to keep quiet when someone older than him is speaking. He's used to the casual use of slurs and pejoratives, knows the ways that old men talk about the good old days. Sam is used to men who’d pulled back from society but thought that society had pulled back from them. They live in basements and cabins, in compounds and old cars. They eye the world with suspicion and the world eyes them back. They are paranoid at best and downright insane at worst and all of them have lost something, someone, to the dark. They live on the edge of a precipice that most people never see.

They stared into the endless madness of the night and were forever changed by it.

Back then, when Sam had been living that life, he'd felt like he lived in mental institution, the lone sane man amongst the insane, but that time had taught him how to work with them, at least. He knows how to handle the nuts like Caleb, holed up in his basement with his guns, convinced that the government is coming for him, them and their secret divisions full of monsters and aliens. Sam knows how to handle the aging hippies like Jefferson, once good willed but now full of bitterness and silence. He knows how to handle the devout, like Jim, men who believe they walk the path of the righteous, in service of some higher power, and Sam knows how to handle the men like his dad, men burning with so much anger, so much hate that they're consumed by it, to the destruction of everything else in their life.

Sam is pretty sure, then, that he can handle Bobby Singer.

He just needs to figure him out first.

The journey from Missouri to Sioux Falls takes six days, the three of them hitchhiking their way through the heartland, some days better than others. Sam sticks to himself, curls up in his solitude, even surrounded as he is. He tries to remember Ruby, to commit every moment to memory until he aches with it and he holds on to that pain, that anger. He feels his brother, a perpetual awareness, feels his eyes on him, feels something even more, and it reels him in, but at the same time Sam won’t turn to look at him.

He knows if he gives in to Dean he’ll lose his grip on this, he’ll give up before he’s even started and Ruby deserves better.

She deserves revenge.

When they make it to Sioux Falls they find it’s a long trek out to Singer Salvage -- that it’s still called that gives them some hope that this may not be a wasted effort, but it’s no guarantee. The walk is long and flat and dull, the three of them silent, silent as they have been over the last week and a half, and Sam’s seen how desperate Dean’s become when a car pulls over for them -- desperate just to talk and to have someone speak back.

Cas has never been much of a talker and Sam isn’t exactly good company right now.

They have to veer off of the highway, down an old dirt road, and part ways with their ride. Sam’s hope sinks when they finally come to the sign. There’s a house here, sure, and some rusted lumps of cars, but it doesn’t look very inhabited. ‘Singer Salvage’ could well be abandoned, the name only an indicator that Singer lived here at one time. But then a dog on a chain charges over, barking and snapping, and it doesn’t look skinny, doesn’t look unhealthy at all.

 _Some_ one is looking after it.

It’s too young to be the dog that Sam remembers, but it’s another rottweiler, and Sam looks over at Dean, then to the house down the worn earthen path. It looks like it could have been pretty once, has a little front porch with hooks for a swing and everything, the remains of shutters on either side of the windows, but some are hanging off. The windows have bars on them, strange for a house out in the middle of nowhere, and the siding is dark with dirt and grime. There are no lights on, every window dark and foreboding, the screen door at the front half way open and dangling from one hinge. For no particular reason that Sam can discern, there's a couple dozen hubcaps tacked to the exterior of the house.

“Looks real inviting,” Dean comments.

“Looks like a _hunter’s_ house,” Sam responds, like _'what did you expect?'_

They’ve seen worse. Hell, they’ve lived in worse.

They skirt around the dog, around the full extension of its chain, Castiel moving to take his position between the two of them and the animal. He watches it with stern blue eyes and the dog backs off, but only increases its barking -- trained to watch for the supernatural, Sam thinks to himself. It can't see Cas, but it can sense him.

They don’t have to knock, they don’t even make it up all three of the stairs to the porch when the door opens inward, a booted foot kicking the half broken screen door full open, the wood whining and protesting the treatment. From the dusty shadows of the house, the muzzle of a shot gun, full length, emerges. It’s too bright out for Sam to see Singer’s form completely, though he _is_ sure it’s Singer, the light falling on the polished barrels of the gun and over the weathered edge of one hand, worn fingers supporting it, the other hitched at the trigger.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice demands, accent gnarled with time, whiskey and suspicion. 

“Hey,” Dean says immediately, sharper than necessary, and Sam knows that his stupid, over-protective big brother is drawing attention off of him. Dean holds up his hands to show ‘no harm,’ eyebrows raised and expression open to conversation, but calm and firm. “We don’t mean no harm.”

“Hell you don’t. Rumsfeld wouldn’t be pitchin’ a fit if you weren’t trouble. What I want to know is how you got through the wards.”

“I dunno what you think we are, but we’re human.” Dean’s eyes flicked between himself and Sam, indicating the two of them. “We’re hunters.”

“Little young to be on the job.”

“We were raised in it,” Sam monotones, looking up the line of the shotgun, too used to guns and gun nuts to be freaked out by that alone. No gun barrel will ever be as dark, as threatening as his father’s, and Sam knows the difference between a man trying to kill him and a man trying to threaten.

“What idiot raises kids in the life?” Singer asks.

“John Winchester,” Sam replies.

There’s a pause then, no further questions coming. The shotgun doesn’t waver or drift, held firm with firm hands, hands used to meting out violent justice. Finally, though, it lowers, swinging down as Singer straightens, looking out at them from under the brim of cap, his face stern and mouth set. Like most hunting men he has a beard, scraggly hair unkempt, left more for laziness than style or choice.

“…John Winchester’s boys. I remember you. Dean,” he says, looking to Sam's brother, then tracking to Sam, taking another couple of seconds to come up with his name. “…Sam.”

“Got it in one,” Dean replies, lowering his hands. “Dunno what your security system there picked up,” he lies, easy as breathing, “but we’re human. Hunters, like we said. We had a brush with a demon not too long ago, a strong one. Might be he smells that.”

“Might be,” Singer replies, and Sam has a hard time reading his tone. After a pause, though, he sighs, the tension going out of his frame and he tucks the barrel of the rifle back against his shoulder. “Well, you might as well come in then. No sense in sortin’ this out on my front porch.”

He turns away, receding into the shadow of the darkened house, and Sam glances at his brother, who just shrugs. Dean goes first, of course, Sam on his tail and Castiel behind them, watching warily over his shoulder. Out in the yard, the dog finally quiets.

They end up seated around a rickety old oval table, the wood surface standing on uneven legs in the open space of a barely cared for kitchen. Everything is a mess -- the sink filled with grease and pots and pans, the cupboards coated in gods knew what. The countertops are filthy and the fridge looks like it’s from the 1950s, the place barely fit for human habitation, let alone cooking.

It’s a hunter’s house, alright.

“So,” Singer says when he seats himself in one of the two open seats, Sam and Dean sitting perpendicular to each other, Dean’s elbows pressed to the old wood. Singer leans back in his chair, popping open a bottle of…something. There’s no label on it and Sam does his best not to make a face when the older hunter pours them each a glass.

Sam wants to refuse, to politely turn it down, and in the normal world, that would be okay. It would be accepted if someone who doesn’t like to drink or who just doesn’t want to drink right now turned a glass down. In the hunter world he might as well spit in Singer’s face. Never turn down a man’s booze, especially in that man’s house.

So Sam reaches out for his glass at the same time as Dean, both of them giving a nod of thanks. Sam takes a sip first, wanting to grimace at the sharp burn of poorly aged alcohol, the taste bitter and sharp. Sam’s never had much of a tolerance for the stuff to begin with. Even the good stuff tastes kind of like ass, and that’s never changed, no matter how many times Dean gives him a mock-wounded expression.

“You two want to tell me what’s going on?” Singer continues, once they’ve both started drinking, picking up his own chipped glass. 

“Well, I know you and my dad didn’t exactly part on good terms--” Dean starts, but Singer gestures dismissively with his glass hand.

“He’s a sum’bitch and I ain’t gonna lie, I mighta taken the shot if he came back here, but I don’t got any beef with the two of you. Now tell me -- what’s going on?”

“It’s…complicated,” Dean admits, reticently.

“Boy, what isn’t these days?”

It’s a long story to tell, one with no shortage of potential minefields. Most hunters have a cut and dry policy when it comes to the preternatural -- that is, if it’s human, you might have to kill it; if it’s not, you definitely have to. Dean can’t take any chances, but at the same time he has to give enough details for Bobby too actually be able to help them.

Dean relates what he can the best he can, skipping over John trying to kill Sam and substituting in a fight over Sam going off to school. He cites this as the reason they can’t go back to their dad. He tells Bobby that they’ve been in California for the last four years, that things have been fine and that they’ve left the hunting life. He obviously can’t tell the man about Castiel or Ruby, and it sours Sam’s stomach to sit there and listen to Dean detail Ruby’s death without ever mentioning her.

The fire, the demon, his yellow eyes. His determination to kill Sam.

It’s a dodgy dice to roll. Dean can’t admit that Sam’s anything supernatural, anything dangerous, but he also can’t ignore the fact that this demon’s been after Sam since he was six months old. It’s too integral to figuring out what the hell is happening to them. To finding out who the monster who killed Ruby is.

“…Hell of a pickle you’re in,” Singer comments when Dean finishes, setting his glass down on the table and turning it contemplatively. He sniffs once. “How’d you get away?”

“Don’t know, honestly,” Dean answers, shrugging his shoulders. “We booked it out of there as fast as we could. Sammy had some salt on him and we tried to block the damn thing off. I still thought we were goners, but we got the hell out of dodge and we haven’t stopped running since.”

“And you still think your daddy wouldn’t pick up the phone? A fight’s one thing -- you really think he’d leave you hanging if the thing that killed your mother showed up again?”

“Hell, I don’t even know the man’s number anymore. He changed it every six months, back then, there’s no way he has the same one now.” Dean glances over at Sam, all part of the performance and Sam does his best to look soulfully back. “Sides, he kicked us out. I don’t--... This is our problem now.” He looks back at Singer. “I didn’t want to go crawling back to him.”

Singer nods slowly, thinking this over as he stares at the light reflection in his empty glass.

“Got your pride, I can understand that…” His eyes flick up. “You’ll come crawling to me, though.”

Dean’s expression hardens at that and Sam knows it’s taking a lot for Dean to restraining himself from responding to that like he wants to. This isn’t all an act. Dean really does have a strong sense of pride, more of a hunter than Sam ever was, and Dean lives by their code. By the idea that a man pulls himself up with his own two hands.

“…I heard a lot of hunters come to you. That you’re an expert in demons and a demon problem is exactly the kind of problem we have. If you don’t want to help--”

Singer holds up a hand, shaking his head.

“Me’n your daddy didn’t get along,” the man comments, looking at the two of them. “That’s no secret. For starters, I never approved of him dragging you two around like he did. Hunting’s no life for kids. Doing what we do, it’s a solitary life. It’s a life for folks don’t have nothing’ left.” He lets out a long breath. “That said, you ain’t kids anymore and you ain’t wrong. I do my best to help. Can only run around in the field so long -- I’m not that old, but ‘not that old’ is still enough to get you killed. Only takes half a second… So I do what I can from here. Help how I can.” He glances between Sam and Dean. “Thing is...the folks I help are men and women I _know_ , men and women who’ve had my back. I don’t know you two from Adam and the fact of the matter is that my relations with Winchesters ain’t been the best.”

“We’re not our father,” Sam reminds, tries to keep the bitterness out of the statement, but he knows that it was a mistake to speak up the minute that Singer’s wary eyes flick to him.

“So, what’s your side of the story?” he asks and it’s a dangerous question. Singer isn’t fishing for something -- if he were, Sam might be able to figure it out and give him the answer he wants. But he’s just generally suspicious, given to the caution of men and women who fight with forces far beyond their control, who fight with ghosts and demons, who have to withstand the tricks and trickery that the creatures of myths and legend employ. The life leaves them uncertain of everyone, every human face potentially a mask.

Sam wants to get Singer’s help, but the problem is that he’s too tired for these games, too tired to jump through hoops. He’s been fucked with his whole life and he’s tired of it. His brow sets.

“Same as his,” Sam replies, nodding his head in Dean’s direction.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Singer’s eyes narrow and Sam doesn’t break his gaze. He knows he’s tipped the direction of the scales, tipped them from suspicion to outright defense, Singer’s trust small enough to start with. The fact of the matter is, though, that it’s not fair. Sam’s been through enough as it is. He’s being chased by a demon that kills the people he loves and he needs _help_. He shouldn’t have to justify himself.

He shouldn’t have to defend his position as victim.

Singer never gets a chance to respond, though.

A second later there’s a thunderous clatter as an incredible force hits the front door, sending it flying open and shattering the doorframe. Everyone around the table jumps to their feet, tense and ready, turning to see a woman with short blonde hair striding in through the front hall way. She’s young, pretty, probably the same age as Sam.

And her eyes are pitch black.

“Hello boys,” she says, far too cheerful.

 _”You,”_ Dean says and Sam’s head whips around to his brother, surprised.

“Aw, you remember me, how sweet,” the demon says, smile overly saccharine. Castiel is a flutter of wings, moving to stand wary in the hallway, but the demon just looks him over coolly.

"Please," she says to the angel, rolling her eyes.

“Meg,” Dean says. He doesn’t get to say anymore though -- Meg raises her hand, a casual motion, and then Sam feels a force barrel into him, hit him like a horse at full gallop, like a car in motion, and he’s flying across the room. He feels his back hit a wall hard, body cracking painfully against the corner of a desk on the way. He winces and grunts, trying to open his eyes, to clear his vision enough to figure out what’s going on, to see Dean.

His brother is the same as him, crumpled, though -- having hit the wall and his knees having buckled, conscious but head hung, trying to shake himself out of it. Meg is grappling with Castiel, the two of them fighting, Bobby slumped against a wall and the brim of his hat covering his face. It takes Meg a disturbingly short time to deal with the angel, yanking his wing down before tossing him aside. She stands there for a moment, then looks up at Sam, and in the next second he and Dean are pinned against a wall by nothing but thin air. The demon walks over to him with a smirk on her lips.

“You really thought this would work out?” she asks, almost laughing, like it’s hilariously ridiculous. “You went to one of the most connected hunters on the continent. A well known congregation spot for hunters. Did you really think that we wouldn’t be watching it?”

Dean grunts, trying to get his legs under him. Meg is smiling, vicious, malicious, and she lifts a hand, fingers curled like claws.

“It’s me you want,” Sam wheezes, and Meg’s eyes are on him.

“Sammy--” Dean starts, but in the next second Castiel is in front of him, dazed from the force of Meg’s attack but unwilling to stay down and Sam is glad for that. But he doesn’t want Cas to die because of him too, just like Ruby did.

He doesn’t want Dean to feel what Sam feels now.

The demon walks across the room towards Sam, her hips cocking with each step, the swagger of the triumphant.

“Well, that’s true enough. You know how long my father’s been looking for you, little Sammy Winchester?”

“Twenty one and a half years?” Sam snarks.

“Oh, much longer than that. You’re a slippery little eel when you want to be, you know that? So big and bold and wreathed in flame when you want all eyes on you, but oh boy, when you want to be gone you are _gone_. Like a dead beat dad.” She snorts. “Only interested in your kids when they’re of use to you.”

“What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that my father is going to bleed you like a stuck pig,” she hisses, gleeful and terrifying, anger fused with joy in an unholy union. From the corner of his eye, Sam can see Dean trying to get Castiel to go and protect him instead of Dean, even as the angel tries to free Dean from the force pinning him to the wall. Sam’s eyes stay glued to the demon. “He’s gonna get his hands up inside of you, pull out all the wet and glistening bits. He’s gonna tear you to shreds and I’m going to watch the whole--”

Her speech cuts off as she runs into something that isn’t there, into some kind of invisible wall, and her brow and Sam’s furrow at the same time.

“Got a problem there?” Singer wheezes as he gets up from where he was thrown, one hand against what is obviously a pained side. He huffs a laugh though, and Meg’s eyes turn slowly up, Sam’s following, to find a huge black symbol painted on the ceiling, a scorpion contained within an inscribed circle.

The fifth pentacle of Mars, Sam’s mind quickly supplies. 

A devil’s trap.

“Well known congregation spot for hunters,” Singer says, smile grim. “Said it yourself sweetheart. Did you really think I wouldn’t be prepared?”

“You--” Meg starts, lips pulled back into a sneer, but Singer quickly reaches out to grab Sam’s still mostly full glass from the table, throwing it in her face. Booze to the eyes doesn’t feel great, but that’s not why Meg screams and clutches her face, the force holding them in place vanishing. As Sam slumps to his feet he can see smoke rising from her skin, can see it turning red under her fingers.

“...You put holy water in our drinks?!” Dean demands as he gets uncomfortably to his feet.

Singer just shrugs.

“Never hurts to be certain,” he replies, tucking his hands into his pockets as he looks at the both of them. 

Dean frowns but the older hunter smirks. 

“If it makes you feel better…" he says. "I believe you now.”

\-----

Dean and Sam lift Meg into a chair while she's still incapacitated by the holy water, lashing her wrists to the arms and her ankles to the legs. She stirs, groaning, not fully unconscious but not as much of a danger as she could be. As it is, the pentacle above them should bind her power.

Sam takes the opportunity.

"How did you know her?" he asks his brother as their hands work with the thick ropes.

"Huh?" Dean asks, not looking up, even though Sam's pretty certain he _did_ hear him.

"I asked, how did you know her? She came in and you said _'you'_ \-- then you knew her name. I've never seen her before. How did you know her?"

"Jealous, Sammy?" Dean asks, deflecting, but Sam just frowns disapprovingly at him. Dean sighs. "Fine. I met her in Palo Alto."

"What? When?" Sam's brow furrows. "I don't remember her."

"You wouldn't. It was at the restaurant. I was out taking my break and she stumbled into me."

"And you didn't think that mentioning the fact that you ran into a _demon_ might be important?" It's useless and in the past, but Sam's angry anyway -- he can't help but think that if they'd had some warning, things would have been different.

"Oh c'mon, Sam," Dean replies, exasperated. "You really think I knew she was a demon? She snapped a heel and accidentally head butted me. We talked for like three minutes, she tried to get my number, then we went our separate ways. It wasn't like it was the most exciting event of my day. Hell, I think that was the same day that Ronnie sliced off the tip of his pinkie."

Sam rolls his eyes -- because Ronnie _clipped_ his finger at worst, and Sam's also knows that that didn't happen the same day and Dean knows it. Dean's just trying to wave it off, trying to make Sam smile or something. It just kind of pisses Sam off more.

"Whatever," he mutters, tying tight the rope around Meg's ankle.

"Sam--" Dean starts.

"You two done gossiping?" Singer asks, walking back in from the kitchen, carrying some more holy water and a book of exorcisms under his arm. Sam pushes himself to his feet.

He makes his way outside of the devil's trap, over to the dresser where Castiel has perched, his white form tucked up on top of the cabinet. He's watching Meg with vigilant eyes, tense until Dean also leaves the circle. Even then the angel is far from relaxed. He's still ruffled by being caught by surprise, and worse, thrown into the unfamiliar. This is the first time Cas has faced a threat without Ruby. It's the first time there's been no back up, no help coming. He has two charges now and one less guardian, and Sam can see how out of place his feathers are. He looks taut and displeased, like being watchful now can make up for his perceived failure.

Sam doesn't blame him. He would have protected Dean first too.

"What happens now?" Dean asks, dusting off his hands.

"Well, first off," Singer replies with a grunt as he hefts the big, ancient bound book up on to the desk behind Meg, thumbing it open. "I'd like to know why a damned demon broke down my front door. Especially a demon strong enough to get through all the protections and wards I have on the place." He glances over his shoulder at her, then back to the book, flicking through the pages. "I always expected somethin' like this, given all the folk I take in, all the... _publicity_ I got in their world, but she was less than interested in _me.”_

"We need to ask her," Dean says to Sam, moving to stand over in front of him. "She knows who the yellow-eyed bastard is, no doubt. Now we've got her tied up, I think it's the perfect time to play a little game of 'what do you got for me?'."

"She might just be some underling," Sam points out.

"Sure, but when was the last time you saw demons working together? They're just wanton destruction--" Dean cuts himself off then, looking away at Sam's scowl. It's not that what he's saying isn't true. It's just that he's talking about Ruby too. "...Sorry," he says, not able to explain to Bobby or anyone else what he's apologizing for.

"No," Sam dismisses with a sigh, aware that he's kind of being a pain in the ass. A somewhat jealous pain in the ass -- over a goddamned demon of all things. "No, you're right. This is exactly the chance we've been looking for. She could tell us what's going on. What he's after. You know, besides me." Sam shrugs.

"I dunno what you two chuckleheads are talkin' about over there," Singer says before he turns around, book open over one arm -- Sam winces. That _has_ to be cracking the spine. "But this is my house and I'll be askin' the questions."

"You don't understand," Dean objects. "She knows who's after us."

"I understand perfectly, and we'll do our best to get you some answers, but we're not _interrogating_ the poor girl."

"She's no girl," Dean growls.

"Sure she is," Singer replies, like it's obvious. When he looks up at Dean, though, he's serious. All business. "There's a girl in there, Winchester. You came to me cause I'm an expert? Well, I've been exorcisin' demons since you were knee high, and I've seen that they do to their victims. I'm not leavin' this poor girl hangin'. You get what you can, but my job is to save the girl."

Meg chuckles then, sudden and dry, her vocal cords clicking slightly with the rattle of it, and she raises her head. She's prettier than Sam previously thought -- prettier without that smug anger clouding her features. She's smiling now, full of malice, but Sam can see that it could be a nice smile, if only the right person were in charge.

"Save her?" the demon asks, teeth glinting cruelly. "You think I'm that gentle? I ride them _hard,_ buddy boy. You want me gone, you'll have to kill the girl."

Singer's expression firms, darkens, full of old anger, the kind too common to hunter's faces. Sam's hands tense, fingers curling, feeling the uncertainty in the air. The danger of it. Castiel's wings ruffle, his long neck extending, head shifting over Sam's shoulder.

Dean turns to face their captive, restrained as she is in the center of the devil's trap.

"Yeah? Well, if that's true, we might as well have some fun along the way, right?" Dean asks, striding up to the edge. "We can take some time, get to know each other. Shoot the shit, you know?"

 _"Oh_ yeah." She grins up at him, leaning forward as much as she can. Sam wants to reach out, push her away from Dean, keep his brother from the toxicity of her presence. "We could _totally_ get to know each other. I bet we could be best friends. Wanna tell me your sign, big man?"

"More like I want you to tell me what you and your friends are up to," Dean responds. He leans over, puts his hands on the edges of the chair, getting up in her face. "You called that yellow-eyed scumbag your father... I'm thinking that that makes it a fair bet you know where he is."

"And you think I'm going to tell you?" she huffs, leaning back in her seat. "I wouldn't betray my father. Just like you wouldn't betray _your_ father-- Oh wait." She smirks. "You did."

Dean scowls, pushing himself off the chair to pace in a short circle and Sam sees his chance. He glances over at Singer, still standing there with his book, eyes hard and stance unmoving. Sam moves in closer, more feels than sees Meg's eyes tick over to him. They're human eyes, ostensibly, at least. They aren't flooded black, aren't deep and dark and alien. But they feel it anyway. There's no feeling there, nothing identifiably human to latch on to, nothing familiar to work with. Even in adversity, human beings worked with the same body biology, the same basic vocabulary of thought and feeling, but the creature sitting in front of him is no girl.

It's a monster in a girl suit.

"Tell me," Sam starts, hoping his voice is even half as commanding as he feels it, even half as firm as his anger. "Tell me why you've been coming after me. Why you people killed my mom, my--" He pinches his lips together, shaking his head. "What do you want with me?"

He feels Dean near behind him, can feel his tension. It's not a safe conversation to have in front of a hunter, but Sam has to try. Some days, he feels like he needs to know more than he needs to breathe -- but he knows that Dean would take issue with those priorities.

Meg leans forward, eyes on him like a snake watching a mouse, something like glee in there, something like death. She watches him like he's the only light in the room, subsumed by him, and it makes his skin crawl.

"...What do we want, my Lord?" she murmurs, so low that only he can hear. _”Everything.”_

"Enough," Singer calls, the weight of his footsteps creaking the boards beneath him. "I ain't leavin' her in that condition."

"You heard what she said," Dean points out. "We exorcise that thing and the girl's going to die. We can't just... _kill_ her."

"That's right," Meg agrees, tapping one foot against the dusty floor. She quirks her head to the side with what Sam is sure she thinks is a cute smile. "You wouldn't want to kill poor widdle Meg, would you?"

"We ain't killin' her," Singer replies, cool-- _cold_ , and quick, looking the demon dead in the eye. "This ain't my first rodeo. You're the one killed the girl -- we're just the ones settin' her free. Death is better'n suffering in there forever."

Meg's smile fades, slow but certain.

"Wait--" she starts.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," Singer starts, reading without pause, and Meg grunts in pain, twisting over in her bonds.

"You got anything to say," Dean says to her, crouching down. "Now's the time."

"Fuck off," the demon grits out, her eyes blackened now, blonde bangs falling messy in her face.

"...omnis congregatio et secta diabolica...."

"You're going back to Hell," Dean continues. "What's the harm in spilling some state secrets on the way out the door? I mean, look around." He gestures around them. "Your brethren aren't coming for you. No one's coming to save you. No one's got your back. So fuck 'em, right? Give them the finger as you go out the door."

"...omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis..."

"Ah!" Meg calls out as her head jerks back, baring grit teeth. She breathes harshly through them for a second before she can lower her head, half spitting the words out. "You idiot-- You think--You think anything you can do here--unh-- _any_ thing you can do here has anything on Hell? You think you're _anything_ compared to what I've seen? You're just some kid with a pet bird here, Deano. I don't give a shit."

"...ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine..."

"What did you come here for?" Sam demands, as fast as he can, knowing there's not much time. "You came here to get me, right? Then tell me. Tell me where I'm supposed to go and I'll go. You know I will. I'll walk right into your trap."

Meg chuckles, dark and pained.

"Oh Sammy... You think we can't wait? You live under a clock ticking down, live like your days are numbered... Little you know, my Lord. Little you know. We can wait. We'll wait for eons if we have to. Revenge is no short game."

"Revenge?" Sam says, truly surprised, his eyebrows shooting up.

"...Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo..."

"Wait!" he tries to call, but Singer just glances at him and keeps going. Sam turns quickly back to Meg, desperate. "What the hell do you mean 'revenge'? _You're_ the ones that killed our mother. You're the ones that killed... _her_. You're the ones that--" He shakes his head. " _You're_ the ones to blame."

Meg laughs, coughing and jerking with the pain of the exorcism.

"Oh my little lord... It's a comedy only you could have devised." When she lowers her head she looks into Sam's eyes and he thinks, just for a second there, he sees sadness. "I was meant to have so much more than this... I _had_ so much more than this, once. More than this cold need. But you ruined him. And then he ruined me." She laughs, mirthless, and stares him down. "But the wheel is always turning and it'll come back around."

"...et fortitudinem plebi Suae..."

"And we will _ruin_ you," she swears, nothing but hate in her face.

"...Benedictus deus. Gloria patri!"

Meg's head snaps back with such violence that Sam expects bone to crack. Her mouth stretches wide and she screams like a freight train, a torrent of black ash spilling from her lips and billowing up like smoke, trembling against the ceiling and vanishing. It seems to last an interminable time -- Sam's seen demonic possession, seen exorcisms, but few with the raw power of this one, enough to rattle the furniture in Singer's room, to shake the foundations and whip up a wind, harsh enough that Sam feels like he's being pulled in.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it's over. Her head drops down, flops forward, the silence, the stillness jarring, only the quiet creak of the floorboards to interrupt it. For a few long seconds no one moves. No one wants to. No one wants to go too near and find out that it was all just an impressive light show. Then there is the soft sound of something wet, a slow _drip--...drip--...drip--_ and Sam feels his stomach bottom out.

"Shit," he hisses, darting forward despite Dean's attempt to stop him. Sam's already on his knees, tugging at the ropes, trying to untie her, when he hears the girl groan, _keen_ , a weak sound of animal pain. And beneath that, Sam can just barely hear the grinding of all her broken bones.

"It's okay," he murmurs, even though it's not. "It's okay, you're free now -- we'll get you out."

Dean's there a second later, undoing the other side, tugging on the knots tied too tight, the knots they didn't expect to be untying at all.

"It's okay," Sam says again, trying to dig his fingernails into the tight weave of the rope.

"...Thank you," she mumbles, flubs out with beaten, bloody lips. She takes a harsh breath and just barely manages to look up. "Tha--...ank you..."

"Shh, it's alright. We got you now--"

"She...It--" The girl coughs then, a rattling sound that Sam knows isn't good. He winces at the blood and phlegm and spittle that fly out. "...So long. I couldn't-- _do_ anything."

Her voice goes tight, on the edge of completely exhausted tears, completely worn down agony. Her shoulders jerk a little, but the sob only causes her to cry out her pain again.

"Oh g-- _god_ , make it st-stop..."

"We--" Sam wants to promise that they will. He wants to tell her it'll be alright again. He wants to give her hope because he genuinely wants this to be the turn around point, when her sad story finds a happy ending. But Sam has seen his fair share of wounds. He's seen all the grotesque ways the body can suffer, can crumble. Even if they were at a hospital right now, he doesn't think there's anything that anyone would be able to do for her.

"...I'm sorry," is all he finds to say, looking at her with pity, with compassion, feeling it all too close to the surface, and all he can think is that he wishes someone had been there to hold Ruby's hand like he's holding Meg's now.

Dean manages to slip loose the knot on Meg's left wrist. Sam hears the rasp of the rope and then jerks in surprise as her hand snaps to his arm, gripping it tightly, gripping it with every inch of strength the girl has left.

"Hey!" Dean objects, trying to detach her, as startled by the fast movement as Sam, but Sam can't take his eyes from Meg's bloodshot ones.

"...Soma," she mumbles, her entire body trembling, _shuddering_ with the throes of death. There is no doubt. These will be her last words. "They're looking for--...the soma."

"We've-- We've heard of soma," Sam tries to say, to encourage, but her words walk right over him.

"You h-have to find--...cowherd. F-find the cowherd. They're l-looking for him--" She leans in close, blood dripping so thick from her lips. "Find him. K-kill them...Kill them all."

She holds him, holds his gaze and it couldn't have been for more than a handful of seconds, but for Sam, it felt like it stretched out forever. Then she collapses, broken body half falling, still half bound to the chair, and Sam falls back, hands catching himself on the wood. 

He stares at the body, slumped over, dripping blood, and there's no breath there, no heartbeat. He doesn't have to check. He just knows. He opens his mouth a little, but no sound comes out.

As much as he hated her face only five minutes ago, now he sees someone wholly different. The demon is gone, exorcised and fled, taken her violence with her and all that's left is this broken shell of what was once a girl. Sam never knew her, not even a little bit. He never even saw her until today, and most of that was as little more than a puppet. She is no one of consequence to him. But she feels like another stone trod over to get to him.

Another body left in the wake of his passing.

Wherever he goes, death follows, dark and silent, and he feels it every time.

"...I'll put her back in the yard," Singer's voice breaks through. 

"What about her family?" Dean asks, but the older hunter shakes his head.

"Can't get the law involved -- what the hell would we tell them? Even if we weren't arrested, it'd be hell to go through. The best I can do is salt and burn her. Make sure she finds some peace after all she been through."

"...like the graveyard in Blue Earth," Sam murmurs softly, thinking of all the gravestones out behind Pastor Jim's church, all the graves with more than just one body, with a body or maybe even two hidden down there with it. All the graves with fake names on the top, hiding all the mess left behind. All the lives that hunters couldn't save.

"You two want," Singer says, gruff but less hard than before, something a little closer to warm. "You can stay here. You got a demon problem, no doubt about it, and I ain't one to turn down those that are troubled by those damned things. When we... When we're finished with the body, I'll show you were you can stay. Ain't nice, not gonna lie--"

"Bed's a bed," Dean says, standing up. "And we appreciate it."

Singer nods.

"Well, anyway... Sorry about earlier. I ain't exactly used to a whole lotta _people_. But you can stay here long as you need. We'll figure out whatever it is set this thing after you."

"Thanks," Dean says, genuine, and Sam hears the two of them shake hands. He's still looking at the body.

A second later a downy head tucks under his, rubs against his chin and he smiles.

"Ruby..." he murmurs automatically, a heartbeat before he remembers. He shuts his eyes, lifting one hand to touch the side of Cas's head, fingers brushing through feathers. It's new and different, unfamiliar to him -- a touch from a man, a creature, less than given to tactile comfort, or comfort at all.

But they've all changed.

"...Thank you," Sam murmurs, under his breath.

He feels a warm wing drape over his shoulder, pinyons slinking soft against the flannel of his shirt, a gentle and familiar sound.

And with his eyes closed, for just a moment, Sam lets himself pretend.

\-----

Settling into Singer's( _Bobby's_ , as he insists they call him), is both easy and hard.

Easy because Sam and Dean are used to moving, used to having to set up shop in some new location every few months, or every few _weeks_ , if that was what their father had deemed necessary. Moving their bags in, getting settled, learning the lay of the land -- they're used to it.

Hard, because they haven't _been_ used to it for four years now.

Hard, because it's almost like being home again, almost like having a home again, except it isn't theirs. There are no pictures of them, no walls rebuilt by them. There isn't their collection of magnets on the fridge or their creaky old couch, noisy but comfortable. There isn't a big bed that belongs to _them_. The broken familiarity of their rundown old place is nowhere to be found and Sam can see the hollow echoes in the set up, in the basic truth of a home -- a kitchen, a living room, bedrooms -- but it lacks all the things that made it _theirs_.

This is Bobby's house, covered in old books and papers and dust, and Sam and Dean are only guests. Only moving through, just like before. It makes Sam bitter. It feels too much like a reprimand, like the universe feels the need to remind him that he'll never have any permanence. 

He doesn't let himself dwell, though. He has work to do.

Bobby's collection is impressive. He has at least as many tomes as Pastor Jim did, as many old and wonderful resources, filled with pages of ancient scrawl, stories, images and diagrams all drawn out, guides from the men who came before them. Messages to those who were meant to carry on the good fight.

The problem is that Bobby hasn't kept them even remotely as well organized as Jim had. 

Jim had a basement with a dehumidifier, to keep the paper from curling, had all his books carefully arranged and alphabetized on sturdy shelves. They were all dusted and cared for, looked after -- that's the kind of library Sam's used to. That was what Sam had been expecting.

After the exorcism, after they've been shown to their room -- a small space with two single beds pushed into either corner, with one closet at the other end -- Sam finally takes the time to appreciate the situation better. Most of Bobby's books are kept in the living room, where the exorcism took place, but Sam had been a little distracted at the time to really take it in. It's the next day when he asks Bobby if he can look through things, when he's led back to that room, that he really understands the gravity of the situation.

He sees the stacks and stacks of books, mistreated, _abused_ practically, sitting uneven and unloved, covers left open, corners folded, some flipped upside down to keep them open to a certain point, but had obviously been forgotten, other books stacked on top of them. Sam's tempted to give Bobby the stink eye, to ask him what he has to say for himself, but the older hunter seems unfazed. Like it's normal and okay to treat books like this.

"You're welcome to dig through it, see what you can see. I can tell you that most the texts on higher demons -- and that's what you're looking for, that I know for sure -- are over there." He points over to the rightmost corner. "...and a little over here." He points to a half full cabinet.

Sam runs a hand over his face.

He ends up spending the first four days cleaning. Bobby objects and Dean rolls his eyes, but there's really no way that he's going to get any work done like this. They find out that Bobby doesn't really own "cleaning supplies" as such, but Sam makes do with a clean t-shirt from his bag for dusting and a damp cloth to clean off the furniture.

It's no short work. There really _were_ a lot of books and Sam had to move them all, one by one, sorting them into stacks and then smaller stacks and then finding places to shelve them.

"I'll never be able to _find_ a damn thing," Bobby complains.

"They'll be in _order,”_ Sam replies, holding six heavy tomes in his hands. "What do you mean you won't be able to find anything?"

"I mean I knew where everything was before."

"That's mathematically impossible. Unless you have an eidetic memory."

"A what?" The old hunter makes a face.

"Just let him go, Bobby," Dean chimes in, leaning back in a chair as he watches. "Trust me on this -- you're not going to be able to stop him."

"You could _help_ , you know," Sam pointed out.

"When I help, you get mad at me for doing it wrong."

"That's because you always do it wrong."

Dean lets out a world weary sigh and takes another sip of his whiskey -- this time not watered down. Castiel stands by the window, watching the world with wary eyes.

By the time that Sam is done, they've settled into a routine. They get up in the morning, Sam going to the books and Dean going out to the yard, burning his time helping Bobby fix up some old cars. The old hunter promises that Sam and Dean can take one if they can get it running and that's enough to get a spark started in Dean's eyes. Sam doesn't begrudge him it. A car really _would_ be useful, and besides, it's a distraction. It's something to keep Dean away.

He feels a little bad that he likes that.

Sam loves his brother. Nothing in the world could make him stop. It's just... It's hard, is all. He feels like Dean just wants him to get over it. To move on. Like losing Ruby is something he can get over. He knows that Dean doesn't really think that, not consciously. Dean and Castiel have never been close and cuddly like Sam was with Ruby, but even so, Dean knows what it's like to share a soul with an inhuman creature, to have half of himself exist somewhere else. He knows what that feels like.

He just doesn't know what it feels like to lose it.

And Sam hopes he never does know. Every part of Sam hopes that, except for the tiny, horrible, selfish part. The one that's jealous that Dean still has Cas while Sam sits alone, devoid of the black presence that has lived in his shadow all his life.

Castiel tries to make up for it. So long as Dean is nearby, Cas doesn't need to be in the exact same room as him. Some days he stays in with Sam, sitting on the couch as a man or perching on the desk as a bird. He always looks a little nervous, like he thinks that he should be somewhere else, and Sam knows where he thinks he should be.

"You can go, you know," Sam says to him, one day in their second week there.

The white bird just quirks his head at him.

"To where Dean is," Sam clarifies. He looks up from the book he's reading. "I know you want to."

Cas seems to think about it for a minute but eventually shakes his head, frill rising up. He stays, but his dark eyes dart out to the window frequently, to the yard where Dean is working.

He doesn't blame Cas. Dean's his ward, not Sam. He doesn't blame Cas, except when he does. It's one of the many, hundreds of reasons that Sam just wants to be left alone right now. He's angry all the time, an animal in pain, and it's so hard some days to keep himself from lashing out, from saying something ugly and hurtful, something to make everyone ache like he aches. It's unfair to both Dean and Cas, but it is what it is. All Sam can do is to try and stay by himself, somewhere where he won't say something he'll regret.

If he's capable of regret anymore.

Some days, it feels like he can only feel the one thing.

It doesn't get better with time. Day passes after day and every evening calls an end to the same fruitless search. All he can find on the myth is the same as what Castiel told them: that the demigods, the asuras and devas, dredged the oceans for the elixir of immortality, only to find a poison that would kill the world. There was nothing there to tell him what the demon might be up to, what his intentions were, nothing but Meg's, the _real_ Meg's, whispered words.

And Sam knew what soma was, knew it was the elixir, but that didn't tell him much. So the yellow-eyed demon still wanted to become a god -- what did that have to do with Sam? The legends said that the gods had hidden the drink, but it didn't say where and Sam certainly didn't remember. He'd be of no help.

Besides, the yellow-eyed demon's actions had seemed a lot more vindictive than those of someone just searching for something.

Then there was Meg's other clue, the one more relevant to them finding the bastard: _cowherd_. Whatever the hell that meant. 

Sam has nothing. Sam has less than nothing: he has tantalizing clues of _something_ that then lead to nowhere. It's beyond frustrating and after three weeks at Bobby's with nothing to show for it, he throws himself into bed, pulling the sheets up over his shoulders, staring at the wall less than six inches from his face.

Sleep is impossible to find.

Turns out he's not the only one, though. After a couple of hours of having endless thoughts running around in his head, he's interrupted by Castiel's, low and quiet on the other side of the room from him.

“You should sleep,” the angel remarks, and at first Sam thinks he's talking to him, but then he hears Dean snort.

“What do you think I’m _trying_ to do, dumbass?” Dean asks.

“I think you are torturing yourself with unnecessary thoughts.”

“What thoughts are ‘necessary’?”

“The ones that keep you alive.”

“Now you sound like Dad.” Dean says, sounding irritated. A second later, though, he sighs. “Didn’t you used to like...make me pass out, back when I was a kid and having nightmares?”

“You are no longer a child.”

“Yeah, but I still have bad dreams.”

“You did not have a bad dream. I would have known.”

“... _Feels_ like a bad dream,” Dean mumbles. Sam's eyes trace the uneven curve of a senseless shadow, watching the thin light from the hallway on the wall, a narrow line written up to the ceiling. Sam understands. He understands exactly what Dean means. It felt like this wasn’t real. Like none of this was happening. It felt like Ruby would be waiting for them at their next stop, that Sam had just sent her on ahead. The idea of never seeing her again, _never_ seeing her again, was so foreign, so baffling, like losing the sun or the moon or Latin. She was a fixture in their world, a permanent piece. There’s no way she could just be _gone_.

But then again, Sam can't help but think that perhaps, once, Dean thought the very same thing about their mother.

“...You saved Sam,” Dean says, though Sam's sure he means to ask it. 

“Yes,” Castiel answers but Sam doesn't give Dean opportunity to respond.

“Why?” Sam asks, his voice disrupting them, and Sam feels the first ticklings of something beyond his anger. He sits up to look over at the remains of his family, Dean looking surprised, like Sam would just sleep through this, and Castiel sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, elbows leaned on his knees, scraggly tie hanging down. He is looking across at Sam. 

“You were passing,” the angel explains. Begins. “The other half of your soul was passing on and you were meant to go with it. I--...Did the only thing I could think of.”

It isn’t the words themselves that make Sam raise his eyebrow but rather the stumble, the stutter. The hesitance in Cas’s words that had never been there before. Sam has known Cas all his life, not as well as Dean but all the same -- and the angel never doubted, never doubted himself or the orders he'd kept secret for so long. But when Sam looks over at the angel he sees something floating in those blue eyes, an uncertainty that makes him look too young, too human, and it makes Sam feel off balance. 

When he looks at Dean's face, though, he sees the subtle stirrings of fear.

It had never occurred to Sam before that moment that Cas was the only real parent Dean’d ever known. The only one that never left, anyway. Dean was strong for Sam, but in turn, he needed Cas to be strong. To know. To have absolute and unflinching certainty.

“What I did was a gamble. I did not know if it would work,” the angel continues. His voice is confident and stark again, but he doesn’t meet either of their eyes. “I hold half of Dean's soul. You were missing half of yours. I did what I had to, to keep you both here in this life.”

"...you didn't answer my question," Sam murmurs softly.

"I wish I could answer it properly but...I do not know myself as I once did. I do not _know_ , anymore. Not with the certainty that I once did." He clasps his hands together, between the spread of his knees, knuckles lightly intertwining.

"Maybe that's not as bad as you think," Sam suggests. 

“But you... _devas_ just want to keep war from breaking out, right?” Dean asks, his tone a little confrontational -- always has been when he feels like he's being led around by the nose. Unless it was Dad. "You've said as much before. Only, you know, not actually coming out and _saying_ it."

The implication is right there: Castiel has always been part of their family for them, but for the angel, his time with them is new. Short in comparison to what he must have lived before. His orders had never been to look after Sam. Only to keep Dean from ascending.

“I find,” Castiel replies, voice contemplative. “That my motivations have become more fluid with time.”

“And what does that mean?” Dean growls, his patience never great but even less now.

“It means he cares about us, Dean.” Sam’s voice is soft, quieter to Dean’s right. Dean looks at him, but Cas seems almost surprised by the statement, as if he didn't realize that that was what he'd been saying. Maybe he hadn't.

The room is quiet for a moment, Dean in his bed and Sam in his and all of them silent. Sam smiles a little to himself when he realizes that now is when Ruby would have launched in with something wholly inappropriate. He blinks a little when he realizes it's the first time he's thought of her fondly since her death -- the first time he's thought of her without that immediate lance of pain.

He's missed her. And blamed her. Blamed her for leaving him.

"...Cas?" Sam asks quietly, tipping his head to the side a little as he looks at the angel, concern trickling through him like water over too parched soil, slow and not yet absorbed, but just beginning to quench.

“I was given my task,” Castiel replies, though his response doesn't appear to be apropos of anything. His hands lift and fingers steeple together, leaning his nose against them. “I remember when my superiors came to me with the soul." He looks to Dean. "You were in...transition. Between your last life and this one. When you die, every time, the deva that carries your soul dies with you. The soul becomes whole and moves on to its next life -- and that is when we catch it again, the same with Sam and the asuras. I had seen it happen a thousand times, through a thousand mortal lives, but never had I been approached.”

The angel looked down then, eyes studying the carpet like a human might, contemplative and avoidant, and Sam felt cold wash through him at the thought. Once, Ruby had been offered his soul, had been offered _death_ , and had chosen it. Even if she hadn't been killed, she would have died when Sam did.

She'd signed herself up for a death sentence and so had Cas.

“I was honored," the angel--deva, continued. "I would carry half of our god, would have the chance to stand beside you through a lifetime. I didn’t hesitate to agree.”

“But you would die,” Sam pointed out, desperate to see some kind of emotion there. Some desire to live. “You had to know that. You would be there to make it all failsafe, yeah, but even if you never needed to be used as that, when Dean eventually died, you would die too -- when one half passes, so does the other.”

And Castiel just nods, as if this is par for the course.

“I would die. But there is a reason that only the lower devas are ever chosen for this task, and that is it.”

“And you’re _okay_ with that?” Sam asks, his tone as offended by the notion as he is. It feels like some fundamental wrong, like some societal strata that shouldn't exist anymore. It's wrong. Sam doesn't need any god to tell him that. “Being treated like your life is worth less?”

“I am ‘okay’ with it.”

“Why? _How?_ You’re a person, Cas. You deserve better than that.”

“To be chosen was an honor. To live with the others, I would be nothing. One of the lower devas, unnoticed, unnoted. But to become the vessel of the avatar, to live alongside our god for a lifetime -- my life, my name, would have meaning. I would become of consequence.”

“You were already of consequence,” Sam frowns, almost pouting. “You’ve always _been_ of consequence. You’re family.”

Cas looks surprised at that, like he’s not expecting it, and given the way the angel tries to see this whole thing as his job, his duty, Sam knows he wasn’t. Cas looks at holding Dean and Sam's hands when they kids walking home from the park, looks at picking them up to help them post mail, looks at making Sam omelettes or pancakes in the morning and still somehow things he was just doing his duty. That it wasn't immediately obvious that he was one of them. Castiel has never really understood how it works. That they’re family. That they stick together. Ruby got it better, but Cas always put himself on the outside looking in. The whole thing hits Sam in the chest, something painful.

Sam's bed creaks as he gets up, the old springs in the mattress complaining as his long legs unfold, bare feet meeting the hard carpet. Sam pads quietly around Dean’s bed and walk over to the angel. Castiel is watching as well, the expression on his face so confused, so baffled that he looks young, not like a centuries old beast of divine flame and feathers. It makes Sam’s heart pinch.

Sam reaches out and puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder, certain that he's overstepping bounds, certain he's not supposed to do this, that it's not supposed to be like this, but they've stuck with the rules long enough. They've allowed, too long now, those delineations to lie between them. To say angel and demon, good and evil, to think of Dean and Cas, Sam and Ruby. Sam's exhausted and he misses Ruby so much that most days he doesn't even want to get out of bed.

But he lost her. She's gone now, forever. The only people he has left are Castiel and Dean.

At Sam's touch, the angel’s mouth opens soundlessly.

“...Thanks,” Sam says first, sad smile on his lips. “Thank you for saving me. And you matter to me, okay? And to Dean, even if he’s never going to say it.”

Dean makes a disgruntled noise on the bed, pretending to look away. He doesn’t like his vulnerabilities laid bare, but Sam always does it anyway.

“...You are much kinder than I was led to believe,” Castiel replies, like that’s what’s relevant now.

“You’ve known me my whole life,” Sam points out.

“All of _this_ life. There have been so many more.”

“Yeah well. This is the one that matters.” Sam is resolute on that fact, voice firm and Cas blinks in surprise. “Look. I don’t care about these past lives or who I was or who I’m meant to be. I’m _me_. I’m never going to be anyone else than me and I don’t want to destroy anything. You’re part of my family and we’ve already lost so many--”

Sam stops for a moment, sucking in a breath. He wants to let go, wants to give in to all of it, and maybe this is the moment -- it feels like this is the moment, like this is when it’ll all come out like it has to. Because it _does_ have to. Sam lost a part of himself a month ago, lost his friend and partner and other half. Sam lost _Ruby_ and no one just magically recovers from that. But the moment passes and Sam doesn’t break down. He doesn’t even cry. He just swallows and opens his eyes and continues, pretending like his voice isn’t a little watery.

“We’ve lost our mom and...our dad. Now we’ve lost Ruby... You were always family. And you’re always going to _be_ family. Dean and I don’t want to keep you alive just because you’re bound to us. I _loved_ Ruby. It’s not my soul I’m missing right now. And it’s not the soul we’d miss if something happened to you.”

Castiel looks up at him with something so childlike, so unbelievably new and easily broken. It doesn't feel right to have this ancient creature under his hand, gazing up at him like perhaps he has all the answers. Reportedly, Sam is some god of death, some behemoth of ancient myth and legend, but he doesn't feel it. He just feels twenty two and human, as lost as anyone else.

Maybe more so.

He moves his hand to Cas's cheek and dares to take a step closer, wondering if this angel, this deva who'd once sworn to hate and revile him and everything he represented, will shove him away. But Sam tries anyway, arms moving around Castiel's head, holding it loosely against his own chest. Sam shuts his eyes.

"...Thanks," he murmurs. "For saving me."

There is a pause, a heartbeat, and then large hands are coming around Sam's body, grasping in the cloth on his back, against his shoulderblades. Sam remembers when Ruby used to hold him like this, his head pressed to her stomach when he was little, and when he was older, her shoulder. He remember how it comforted him, how he knew, how he _knew_ , she'd never leave him.

But she had.

She'd left him. And Sam's only just beginning to accept that that wasn't her fault.

He hopes he can provide Cas with a tenth of the peace that Ruby had used to give him. By binding them all together, Castiel has betrayed his people, his beliefs. He has left the side of the devas, left the war where there _were_ sides and joined in with the Winchesters. With two people who had shit luck and the unfortunate tendency to mess things up for themselves. 

But they had their good points, too.

Sam turns his head to the side to look at his brother, still sitting up in the middle of his bed, knees propped up and sheets draped between them. One hand grips the other's wrist and he's looking at Sam. His expression is unreadable, full of too many things for Sam to pick out one and choose it. All the same, Sam feels the gentle tug of guilt. He's been pushing Dean away for more than a month now, keeping him out, keeping him away.

And yeah, a big part of that was him trying to keep Dean safe -- trying to keep Dean from joining the unfortunate trail of people that died in Sam's stead, but he knows that he's been hurting his brother.

He wants to say sorry, wants to apologize, but he's having a hard time finding his voice, Castiel still in his arms and Dean's eyes on him and the realization that this is all he has left. And he was so close to losing it all.

But then Dean smiles for him, just a little -- forgiven without even having to ask for it -- and Sam smiles back, thick throated and tight chested. 

Ruby is gone. 

He'll always miss her, always ache for the loss of her. But there's nothing he can do about that. As hard as it is to accept, he's never going to see her again. But he hasn't lost everything. Not yet.

He just has to hold on to what he has left.

That night, for the first time in three weeks, Sam sleeps in the same bed as Dean.

\-----

Sam spends the next day buried in a book again, though he takes a break to come out and watch Dean work. It's a cold, bright December afternoon, sun shining down over the patches of snow scattered over the scrap yard. Dean's breath comes out in pants of steam as he works on the car and the picture makes Sam smile to himself a little.

He thinks he goes inside then, remembers, at least, walking over the threshold and into the shade, into the darkness where his eyes struggle to adjust from the glare. But that's the last thing he recalls, when he wakes up.

He comes around groggy, body feeling sluggish and disconnected from the world. At first, everything is so blurry, so strange and other that he's not even really sure what's real and what's not, not certain when he's awake and when he's asleep. He drifts in and out, seeing flashes of the world before blackness. 

When he finally comes to, finally grabs hold of consciousness and drags himself to it, he groans, lifting a hand to his throbbing head. He can feel his heartbeat. He swallows dryly and it takes him a while, minutes stretching on together, before he's capable of pushing himself up to sit.

He's on a cot somewhere, somewhere underground it looks like, as he blinks to clear his vision. The walls are dark, some blend of brown and grey, rust and metal. They're high, going up above him by at least a story, maybe more. It takes him longer to make out the symbols carved into them -- devil's traps and other wards, things meant to keep out the angry dead.

A second later, a swell of nausea overtakes Sam and he twists his legs to the side, over the edge of the cot, to lean on his knees, letting his head dangle between them. He just breathes, taking it slow, taking each breath in and letting his body settle. He doesn't feel injured. He feels _drugged_.

He swallows again, desperate for water, but for the time being he just stays on the cot, letting his body continue to process whatever poison was put into it. He knows something serious has gone down, knows he needs to figure out where he is and what's going on, but he also knows he won't be any good if he just collapses the minute he gets to his feet.

He's not sure how much time passes before he gets up, just as he's not sure how long he's been down here, but he eventually manages to explore things, finding some basic amenities but not much else. There's a fan and opening at the top, but there's no hope of getting up there, and even if there was, the devil's trap styled grating doesn't look like it'll come out easily.

That just leaves the door, which Sam has already tried to tug open, only to find it far too sturdy to yank free. It's locked from the outside, with an opening in the center, bars over it. Sam's skinny, has long arms, but there's no chance of squeezing one through. 

He is well and truly stuck. With no way of figuring out where he is or why.

Or who put him here.

He paces his cell, trying to think, trying to get his sluggish brain to run again, to figure out the answer to any of his many questions, but there's nothing there. He doesn't think he's gone far at least, the whole place wreaks of hunter, and specifically Bobby's style. He's fairly certain that he's somewhere on Bobby's property. He weighs up the pros and cons of yelling -- either finding help or alerting his captors to his wakeful state.

After what feels like an hour, he gives in and yells for Dean, but wherever he is, his voice doesn't carry far, or at least not far enough, because Dean doesn't come. Sam is forced to sit back on the edge of the cot and wait. 

Wait for whatever it is that is to come.

When it does come, it's not what Sam expects.

The first thing he hears is the shuttered flutter of wings, and then:

"Sam," Castiel's voice comes through the opening in the door and Sam jumps to his feet, seeing the angel's face there.

"Cas, thank god," he lets out a breath, relief feeling fuller and more sudden than expected, walking over to the door and putting his hand against the metal. He's too used too things working out for the worst -- though it says something about him that he thinks that his current situation is _not so bad_. "What's going on?"

"Dean sent me to find you. He is arguing with Bobby Singer."

"Arguing? About what? What's going on?"

"It has become apparent that Mr. Singer called your father."

Sam feels a chill run through him and he curses, his hands going quickly to the handle again, the metal there warped and uneven, but he grips it tightly.

"Shit. Get me out of here -- can you open it?"

"Yes," the angel says and moves to the left. Sam hears the groaning complain of metal against metal and then the door reluctantly opens, Castiel pushing it wide so that Sam can slip out. They're far from out of the woods, but just to be out of confinement feels good to Sam, feels better. He can fight if he has to. It's being _unable_ to fight that he hates.

"Do you know anything else?" Sam asks as he begins to ferret around through all the junk and boxes down here. It's obvious now that they're in the basement and things are just as well organized here as they were above. There's all kinds of things, everything from trinkets and magical amulets to what looks like frilly curtains, bear traps mixed in with nice china. It's a hodge podge of everything, no rhyme or reason to it, but if Sam's learned anything over the last three weeks it's that Bobby Singer has no dearth of weaponry and Sam's not going upstairs unarmed. Already he can hear the muffled shouts of voices going back and forth, the words indistinguishable but the tone unmistakable. Sam roots through things as quickly as he can.

"Dean was asking for you," Cas explains, sticking close to Sam, protective as his blue eyes flick over the room. "Singer was evasive at first but finally admitted that he had learned what you are. Or at least what your father believes you to be."

Sam hates the phrase. Just hearing it makes him pause for a second, makes him wince. He knows what he is, _who_ he is, but he was raised a hunter's son. He was raised to hate anything inhuman and he may be human in form, but he knows now that there is more underneath. He stills hates the idea of people thinking of him like that. Like a monster.

Like a dog that needs to be put down.

"He had called your father," Castiel continues. "Despite his dislike for the man, he seemed to think it pertinent. He said it took him quite some time to track down John's number, but that when they talked, your father warned him about you. He believes, as your father did, that you are a danger to the world."

"Aren't I?" Sam snaps a bit, can't help himself.

"Yes," Castiel answers, instantly and without any hint that he shouldn't. "But what they do not understand is that it is your world to end."

Sam ducks his head and looks away.

"Don't say that," he hisses.

"It is the truth. This world, this cosmic universe, was made by the three gods. You are the Destroyer. It is your right to decide, not theirs. If you destroy the world, Sam, it will be no crime, no sin. No more than a man slaughtering his own sheep. You are a god. They are men. It is not their place to question you, only their place to worship."

Sam looks at the angel, brow furrowed, unable to believe that, unable to believe that the people he'd met in his life had that little consequence, meant that little. 

"What about you? I thought your people worshipped Dean, not me."

Castiel quirks his head to the side, thinking about this.

"...We follow the Creator, it is true. But never did we think ourselves above the lord of death, or the great Maintainer." The angel seems to smile a little. "And perhaps I am finding myself rethinking our devotion to only one aspect of the divine."

Sam blinks at that, not sure if he's surprised or embarrassed or flattered, uncertain what to do with the idea of admiration on that kind of level, but then Castiel looks away, looks towards a shelf tucked back against the wall.

"Is that what you're looking for?"

Sam follows the line of his gaze, finding there a semi-automatic, the glint of chrome metal disguised by the dust. Sam hurries over and picks it up, ejecting the clip and checking it -- it hasn't been well loved but there's no apparent problems, no rust or knicks in the barrel. He glances around quickly before his eyes land on small boxes of ammo and he hurriedly packs the clip with the .38s. He stuffs a few more in his pockets before he heads for the stairs. He glances back at Castiel one last time.

"...got my back?" he asks, feeling strangely vulnerable.

"We are...family," Castiel responds, as if he's uncertain about using the word, as if it's something foreign to the language of his people, but he nods, finding some pleasure in using it anyway. Sam smiles.

He heads up the stairs as quietly as he can. The wood is old and warped, keeping his steps light is difficult, but he eventually makes it up to the door, pushing it slowly open. His stomach flips when he finds himself lucky -- Bobby's back is to the door -- but it quickly drops when he also sees that Bobby's holding a sawed off in his hand. It's dangling at his side, not pointed at Dean, but it's still there, still a danger, and Sam steps out as cautiously as he can.

Bobby is old though, not deaf, and he turns quickly just as Sam steps out onto the main floor. Sam already has the pistol raised, held firmly in two hands and pointed at Bobby's chest. The hunter doesn't have a choice, not fast enough to bring his gun to bear, so he holds his hands out to either side slightly, a gesture of surrender.

"Drop the gun," Sam says, steady as he can manage.

"There's only rock salt in it," Bobby replies, in a tone intended to be soothing. He lowers himself though, slowly, putting the gun gently on the ground before straightening again. "I didn't intend to hurt him none."

"Sure," Sam replies, moving cautiously around Bobby in a wide circle, edging over to where Dean is waiting. His brother's body is tense, all squared off shoulders and clenched fists, his jaw tight, but he looks relieved to see Sam.

"How the hell'd you get out of that room, Sam?" Bobby asks, suspicion written across his face. His eyes are fixed on Sam, turning with him, and Sam knows that expression. He’s seen it on his own father’s face, focused on monsters and shades in the night a thousand times, and once, just once, on Sam himself. It’s the look that tells Sam that he isn’t human. He’s something worse – and sometimes it seems like Dean’s the only person in the world who’ll never look at him like that.

"I'm a monster, remember?" Sam snaps bitterly. "I can do anything."

"The hell are you doing this for, Bobby?" Dean asks, sounding more raw than Sam, and Sam gets that. Dean and Bobby are frighteningly similar, hunters both by nature and mechanics at heart. While Sam's spent the last three weeks stuck inside, the two of them have been bonding over some piece of crap car that Dean seems to think the world of. Sam knows it's been nice for Dean to have someone to talk to, someone like their dad.

A lot like their dad, it turns out.

"Why are you even listening to our dad?" Dean continues. "You don't even _like_ the man. You tried to shoot him!"

"You think that matters when it comes to something like this?" Bobby huffs and shakes his head. "I’m not on _your_ side, boy. No hunter is. Don’t you get that? I’m on the side of all the people on this planet livin’ through tomorrow. You keep thinkin’ cause you’re innocent so far so that means good men will jump to cover you. That ain’t the case. You stick with him--" Bobby motions to Sam, "--you won’t be innocent much longer."

Dean scowls, but he doesn't waver.

"That’s too bad for you," he growls. "Because Sammy and I? We stick together. Unlike you and John and all the rest, we know what _family_ means. Loyalty. You? You’re just a bunch of sad old men waving matchsticks at the dark and jumping at noises. Sad old men pointing guns at a kid. I’m never going to be anything like you."

He says the words like a promise. Like a vow. Bobby's expression darkens but he doesn't say anything, at least not before Dean glances to Sam and speaks again.

"You got him?" he asks. 

Sam's gun doesn't tilt or shake. It's still pointed straight at Bobby, butt firm in the seat of his palm.

"Yeah," Sam replies without embellishment. 

"You sure?"

"I _got_ him, Dean," Sam snips.

"Fine. Good." Dean moves around behind Sam, movements slow, making his way to the stairs up to their room. "Stay here. I'll only be a moment."

Dean spares a second to look at Castiel, still waiting behind Bobby. Cas nods in return and Dean runs up the stairs, the angel there as back up in case anything happens. But Bobby doesn't try anything.

He's a smart man. He's not going to make a move on a loaded pistol held by a trained fighter. Sam may be young but he was raised a hunter. They stand in silence, the only sound breaking through the ticking of the old grandfather clock that always seems to tell the wrong time. Bobby stares at Sam and Sam stares back at Bobby, too wound up to feel much of anything. He hasn't spent as much time with the man as Dean has, doesn't feel any particular closeness, but it's still hard. It's still rough to feel betrayed again. To feel unsafe in the world.

It makes him understand why someone might want to destroy it.

But then he remembers Dean.

He could never end the world that created Dean.

"You know," Bobby starts and Sam's stance tightens. "That boy'd do anything for you."

"And I'd do the same for him," Sam returns, but Bobby continues as if he never said a thing.

"If you care for him, if you really do, you’ll go get back in that cage down there." The hunter's expression is dark and set but also weary. He looks sad, like he doesn't want to do this, and Sam believes that, he just doesn't care. No matter what Bobby's intentions were, he was prepared to hand Sam over to his father to die. 

"He’ll stick by you to the end," Bobby says. "He’ll walk with you straight into Hell."

Sam feels something tight and heavy in his stomach, something a little sick, and his expression tenses. Dean's given up a lot for him -- everything for him. Sam's not blind. He knows that. Time and time again, when the world has forced Dean to choose, he's picked Sam every time. Even when Sam leaned down and kissed him, asked Dean to be something that he should never have had to be.

And Sam can't help but wonder if he really is slowly leading Dean to Hell.

A second later there's a series of loud thumps as Dean runs down the stairs, their messy packed bags hanging from his hands.

"Let's go," he barks to Sam, though his eyes flick momentarily to Bobby.

Sam has to move carefully, edging around Bobby's space again to make his way to the hallway, gun remaining trained. He doesn't want to hurt the hunter, doesn't want to hurt _anyone_ , but life has taught him to prepare for the worst. And he and Dean have to protect each other.

There's a rustle of feathers, the flap of wings, and Bobby can't see or hear it, but his eyes seem to widen a little when one wing brushes him as Castiel takes to the air, flying out past Sam to the open front door. Sam hears the clack of metal as Dean grabs keys from the key rack tacked to the wall.

"Sam!" he yells and Sam finally lowers the gun, turning to run out after his brother. He keeps an eye on his six, following Dean as he dashes through the thin layer of snow towards the Cutlass that he and Bobby have been working on -- that Dean's apparently just going to steal now. Sam tries to justify it to himself with the fact that Bobby was going to let them have it, later.

Sam throws himself into the passenger's side just as Dean slams the driver's door, shoving the key into the ignition and muttering some prayer to the car gods that only makes Sam's heart beat with higher panic. Thankfully, though, the engine turns over, revves to life and Dean shifts the gear, foot pressing to the pedal.

Sam looks back to see Bobby out on the porch, shotgun in his hand but not lifted. Sam still has his pistol ready, but Bobby doesn't try anything. Dean pulls them out onto the dirt road, clumps of dirty sleet collected on either side, the car turning behind the trees and curtaining the house from view.

"You alright?" Dean asks, voice rough. When Sam looks, he sees his brother sending him worried glances.

"Yeah, yeah I'm...I'm fine," Sam says, finding himself suddenly a little breathless.

"You sure? You were-- Christ, Sam, I was freaked."

"I don't think he wanted to kill me."

"He called Dad."

"...Yeah, well. He didn't want to kill me _himself,”_ Sam mutters bitterly. He glances out the windshield, seeing the great white form of Castiel in the sky, his legs pressed together elegantly under him, wings wide out and long neck extended. Every couple of heartbeats he flaps his wings, keeping up with the car in a way a real bird never could.

"Dad'll come," Dean says, unnecessary.

"Yeah..."

"He'll be on our trail again."

"Yeah."

"Fuck," Dean curses, thumping the steering wheel. 

Sam looks over at him, looks at his brother's profile, a cut line of stress and anger against the dark backdrop of the South Dakota woods, his knuckles white around the wheel. Sam thinks of all the times he's seen Dean wear that expression, how it's gotten worse each and every time, stress layering on stress and only getting worse. Sam thinks of Bobby Singer's words and feels a despondent despair, no next step clear to him.

"Dean..." he murmurs.

"...I don't know what to do, Sam," Dean replies, quieter. "I don't know--...What the fuck do we do?"

Sam's not sure he has the answer. Dean's always been the one in charge, always been the one to pull Sam along when Sam thought he couldn't make it. It's Dean that's kept him alive these last few weeks, Dean that's made Sam get up and out of bed when he thought he couldn't. Sam only wishes that he knew how to be the same for his brother. He reaches out, puts his hand against Dean's thigh, making contact, and says the only thing he can think of:

"...just keep driving."


	5. The God Who Smiled

Wyoming is dark and windy, an endless stretch of forest highways weaving veins of asphalt through the green and brown, so many untraveled for so long that they might as well be myth. They’re some of the loneliest roads that Dean has ever traveled, in all his lonely years of driving back and forth across the weary American landscape. Even the monotony of corn and wheat, the plain layout of the midwest, at least felt colonized. That very monotony, a pattern of order that nature would never make, was testimony to that. 

Even the fields of nothing but cows and sheep, even the rural South, so many miles of nothing, at least felt lived in. Part of the world. 

They have nothing on this dark corridor of Wyoming, trees like sentinels on either side, all lined up like jury men, backs straight as rods and casting their silent judgment on every lonely traveler making his way through the cut. In the first two days outside of Bobby’s, sometimes Dean feels like the only person alive, the only person in all the world, clipping through the fog and the mist bank, the barest hint of frost on the windshielf, driving down the hill only to rise over the next to see the same sight as from the peak of the last: a straight line road and trees that last forever.

The silence, sometimes, crowds in too close, and Sammy is asleep beside him and too far away all of a sudden.

The excuse he makes for the motel room is that he’s tired and Sam’s still just waking up, not there enough to ask any questions. Just the colored lights of the neon sign, winking through the grey, is enough to have Dean salivating. He pulls into the lot, stopping their jittery, stolen ride and letting out a breath, like a little kid who thinks that if he stands in the light, the monsters can’t get him.

"Gonna get a room," he murmurs, pushing himself out. The car’s suspension complains and it reminds him of the Impala, something he hasn’t thought about in years. He’d forgotten about her in all the mess. He’d loved that car, but she was still just a car. His own father trying to kill Sam, trying to kill Dean’s little brother and the kid that both he and John had been looking after, raising, for the previous seventeen years, had eclipsed pretty much everything else at the time, including the Impala.

Now, shutting the creaky old door of the junker, Dean misses the familiarity of her metal under his fingertips.

He misses a lot of things.

He gets the room on rote memory, the practice old and easy, words exchanged without much thought and money just the same. He walks back outside with a slight shiver and finds Sam with their bags, the random bags that Dean’d grabbed, stuffed full of whatever he could reach -- at this point he’s just hoping there’s underwear in there. Cas is perched on the railing of the balcony on the second story, preening his feathers. Dean jerks his head to his brother. The two of them walk along the portico, lights flickering in the wane dusk, and Dean unlocks the room, letting Sam in. 

Cas flutters down and touches ground, walking in as well before Dean shut and locks the door.

"We got any salt?" he asks.

"Uh--"

"Nevermind." Dean sighs, moving over to pull the curtains of their room together. Civvie security is the best he can do for his family tonight. It feels like a failure, given how quickly his family is shrinking these days. He glances back over his shoulder and sees Sam flick the light on, watches as his little brother switches into routine, moving around the room and getting settled. He watches Cas try to help, try to pitch in with his ever meticulous hands, folding clothes that don't really need folding. They dig through the bags, pulling out items and trying to sort them, trying to get any kind of idea as to what they have.

Dean, though, isn’t sure what good it’s going to do.

They’re at the edge of the world, trailing bodies behind them, bodies and allies, and all they have is whatever Dean threw into a couple of bags to keep them going. There’s some monster demon after them and they don’t even have salt to keep out the riff raff. Dean had always been in charge of looking after Sam, looking after their family, and even if it had been John who’d given him the order, it hadn’t changed, even with John’s betrayal. It’s always been Dean’s job, and now they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, no information and no supplies, nothing but a stolen car to get them by, and Dean feels--

Dean feels--

He turns back to the curtains, pressing his forehead to the held-taut cloth, fingers clenched in the edges of it. Behind him Sam and Cas are unpacking like everything’s going to be alright, like tomorrow they’re going to get up and keep going, and Dean can’t tell them, he can’t _tell them_ that there’s no way out. They’ve got nothing. There’s nothing more that he can do. He can’t save them and there isn’t even any good reason he can give them for why. John failed them and Bobby betrayed them, but that has nothing to do with _Dean_. 

It doesn’t alleviate him of any responsibility.

There’s danger coming. Something terrible. Something coming to tear the last of his family apart, and he has nothing. Nothing but a stolen car and a couple of bags full of crap. No one even has to tell him that it’s a failure.

"Dean." 

Sam’s voice is just behind him, just barely overcoming the buzzing in his ears. He has to take a slow breath, long and steady. His hands are clenched so tight he can’t feel anything in the tips of his fingers; he untwists them uncomfortably from the thick material of the scratchy motel curtains, the back of his throat dry.

"Everything okay, Sammy?" he asks, voice scratchy and struggling to be as strong as it needs to be. He turns around stiffly.

"Dean," Sam says again, this time like an admonishment.

 _”Sammy,”_ Dean responds, teasing and bitchy. He hates when Sam sees through him. He hates that Sam _can._ Once, a long time ago, Sam was some kid that believed Dean when he said not to be scared, when he said that Dad was coming home and everything was going to be alright. He was a kid who’d believed, without even a single doubt, that Dean could keep him safe. Now Dean looks at him and sees a boy that’s almost a man, a man as tall as Dean is and growing up.

A kid needs his big brother to look out after him. A man doesn’t.

And where does that leave Dean?

For the last few weeks, ever since Ruby’s death, it’s left him in some kind of no-man’s-land, a satellite in Sam’s orbit, passing by close but never noticed. Never touched. He’s barely known what to do with himself. If Sam doesn’t need him, then what good is he? He left his father’s shadow, but the fact of the matter is that all he did was step into Sam’s.

Dean just watches when his brother reaches out, grasping the folds of his flannel shirt, one on either side, and Dean finds his eyes drawn magnetically to the delicacy of Sam’s wrists, bony and slender, the wrists and hands of a scrivener. Some monk doing the minute work of painting those pictures that had been bound in so many of Pastor Jim’s books.

They’re the hands of an artist, not a killer. And Dean’s always tried so hard to keep them clean.

"Dean..." Sam’s voice is softer, an invitation, and Dean raises his head, eyes traveling over the light cast across Sam’s chest, over his shoulders. He sees where it dips into his brother’s clavicle, highlighting the bone, sees where it runs away beneath the point of his chin. Sam’s face is an absolution that Dean doesn’t feel like he deserves, surrounded by messy hair and too much tenderness.

Even with Sam crawling into his bed at Bobby’s, even after that brief flash of comfort, Dean didn’t realize he’d given them up for lost until Sam pulls him in and kisses him.

Dean never gave his arms the command to reach out and grasp, to seize and pull in. It just happens. His is a body in the desperate struggle for air when he hadn't even realized he was drowning. All he can feel is wordless relief when he pulls Sam in and finds that he still fits up against Dean’s chest, the two of them built for one another, perverse as it may be.

And even then, the sin of their act is merely another thing that only they can share. A thing that no one else can have but them.

He feels his brother’s head cant to the side, wants to pull back just to see the stretch of his neck, to trace it first with eyes and then fingers, to experience the subtle curve of it, a poetry that a hick like Dean can’t hope to grasp. So instead he wrangles one hand up and wraps it around Sam’s throat as they kiss, feels it working under his palm. Blood and breath shifting and pumping, a rasp of life that feels so _powerful_ in his grasp and so fragile at the same time. 

When they make it to the bed, stumbling back, Dean feels fumbly and awkward like he never does with sex, feels like a car stalling and failing to slip into the right gear. Sam hits the mattress, all motion and muscle, all curving lines that keep moving, flesh and life, everything complex and living, while Dean crawls forward, awkward angles and boxy limbs. He can’t possibly seem like anything special to this boy under him. Dean’s used to being desired, to being good at this. He doesn’t even know how to _deal_ with being awkward.

But it’s Sam that pulls him down, a tug that almost lands Dean’s full weight on Sam’s chest. Dean catches himself with his elbows, breath run out of him just a moment before their lips form a seal and he’s lost in Sam again.

Cas is still there, somewhere in the room, but it doesn’t bother Dean. Sam is the only person he’s never bothered to ask Cas to leave for. It had always felt normal, right, to have Cas and Ruby there. With someone else it was an intrusion, something wrong and angling, something that poked and scratched at Dean’s side.

With Sam it was just natural. Ruby was part of Sam and Cas was part of Dean. They were extensions that weren’t, limbs that didn’t exist and it didn’t feel strange or unnatural to have them there.

When Dean tugs off Sam’s clothes, feels Sam pull off his own, he doesn’t care that the angel sees them. 

He doesn’t care because there aren’t three people in this room. There’s only one and a half.

"Did you--" Dean asks, when he comes up panting, painting the expanse of Sam with kisses and bites. "Do we have--"

"Yes," Sam answers breathlessly, one long arm cast out to the side, for a moment the illusion of grace dispelled and Dean fights a smile, watching that arm flop around, elbow going everywhere. He laughs to himself as he watches Sam search for the lube and he remembers that this is his brother, just his brother. Nothing strange or other or ephemeral, no matter what any stupid hunter says. It’s just Sam and the natural progression of Sam, from the chubby toddler to the gangly teen and now, slowly, still forming, the man he will be.

He’s still Sam. And miraculously, he still wants to be Dean’s.

The thought makes Dean lean in, press his nose to the angle of Sam’s jaw, just beneath it, snuffling and grinning as he kisses that skin, hearing Sam laugh and feeling him wriggle.

"Stop, stop it!" Sam protests, one hand pushing against Dean’s chest as the other still searches for the lube. "God, you idiot--"

"Your idiot," Dean promises before he really thinks about the words, and in an instant the brief joy is gone, replaced by the cold clench of fear. He remembers all too clearly the results of vulnerability. He remembers their home and their bed. He remembers coming home to that and to Sam’s embrace and to allowing himself, slowly, bit by bit, to be happy. It had been hard and had taken so long, like chipping down the Berlin Wall, only to so swiftly find himself left in the dust of Sam’s anger. 

It hadn’t been Sam’s fault. He’s never blamed him. But that hadn’t changed how it felt. How it feels now, and promising himself over so quickly feels so stupid, so foolish, like he’s some gullible idiot. He’s withdrawing just as quick.

"It’s--Don’t--" he mutters meaninglessly, a gruff sound just for the sake of itself, to cover up how stupidly soft he’d been speaking before, like he’s some kind of Casanova. Sam’s hands are there suddenly, one occupied with the tube, but both of them press to Dean’s face, keeping him from leaving.

"My idiot," Sam says, promises, like Dean’s a chick to be wooed.

"Don’t be a girl, Samantha," Dean grunts, jerking his head a little but Sam holds on.

" _My_ idiot." The repetition is even quieter, even lower, and Dean hates the way it makes his chest feel tight. He hates the way that this crap that he always hated, always thought was trite and ridiculous and beneath him, sounds like everything he could ever want when it’s Sam.

And Sam brings him down. And Sam kisses the center of his forehead. And because it’s Sam, because it’s this one person and no one else, Dean lets him. Dean lies down against him and gives up all pretense of defense. And just like that, Dean's humbled once more, with only trust to shelter him.

"...You can’t do that," he manages to get out, a little gruff and definitely too hurt. "You can’t _do_ that, Sam. Not--...Not again."

"Dean--"

"You can’t just _leave_." Dean can only hope that Sam will understand, though he rarely does. Sam may be a genius and a polyglot but he’s never quite grasped the language of Dean’s people. Never understood that when Dean teases instead of comforts, it’s because that’s what he thinks means love. "It’s-- You were just gone and I didn’t know--"

Because Sam was there, sure. He was beside Dean the whole time. But he was still _gone_. For four weeks Sam was in the same room as him but still always absent, his brother a shell and Dean has always known, _always_ , how to look after Sam but not this time. This time it had been something so frighteningly different, Sam so frighteningly _not there_ , that Dean had just been left whirling.

It feels like Dean had just been looking for an excuse to believe that it was over between them. That happiness was so good, too good, that he had to find a way to get rid of it before it could get rid of him.

"You can’t just leave like that, Sam. I can’t-- I don’t--" 

"I’m sorry," and Sam sounds it, so deep and heartfelt that Dean winces.

"Sam--" There’s nothing more to say. Or nothing more that Dean can manage to get out. He presses his face into the warm whorls of Sam’s hair, breathes the scent of him and the highway, the wind trapped between strands. Their home is gone. Well and truly gone. But the scent reminds him of something earlier, something more base. 

It reminds him of a time when they only had each other. And Dean realizes that’s all they’re ever really going to have.

It’s hard to get in the mood after that, hard to reclaim that kind of energy in the face of something so exhausting, but the intimacy makes up for it. It’s been four weeks and this is no roll in the hay. They take their time and someone turns the light off, washing the room only in the misty pale light of the night outside and the glow of the motel’s sign, casting Sam in starker shadows below him. The angles of his body seem longer, less real, and Dean wonders if the damned kid is still growing, wants to know what changed, what’s different, since they were last together.

But he doesn’t have the fortitude right now to pull back and explore.

In fact, it’s rare that their mouths part, rare that Dean can inch himself back from Sam kissing him. Dean’s hands content themselves with tracing skin and flesh, feeling it warm and cool in different places, feeling it shifting and alive and his. After the last month, the pain of watching Sam drift so far from him and seemingly never to come to back, Dean wants to crush him in close. He wants them to be inseparable.

It’s only later, when Dean’s fingers are withdrawing from Sam’s body, when his brother is hiking his legs, god those legs, over Dean’s waist and around him, that he thinks about the fact that they _are_ inseparable now, in a way. Dean’s never felt it, never had much sensitivity to anything like magic, but he knows, intellectually, at least, that he and Sam are bound together now, through Castiel. The angel bound himself to Sam to keep Sam here with them, bound himself to Sam just as he was bound to Dean.

Dean wishes he _could_ feel it. He wishes there were some doorway in his head that he could reach down and touch Sam on the other side, know where he is, how he is, at all times, know that his brother was there and never leaving. If such a doorway exists, Dean doesn’t know how to find it. He’s never lived in that world like Sam and Ruby had. Dean dealt with what he could see, what he could feel. The world made sense when he could perceive it.

But it was enough to know that the bond was there at all.

That’s what Dean thinks of when he curls over Sam, pushes into him, feeling Sam’s thighs press tight to his waist. It’s all that fills Dean’s mind when they come together, Dean’s hands flexing, one on Sam’s shoulder and the other twisting in the sheets. Sam is tied to him now, in some deeper, existential sense. Tied to him like he’s been tied to Sam, always, ever since that day in the hospital, holding his baby brother and being forever changed by it.

Their sex is slow. Unhurried. Dean feels no urge to quicken it, for all the memories of quick, fumbling fucks around their home, laughing and groaning and shoving at each other. That isn’t this. Tonight Dean’s willing to let it go on forever, wishes it _would_ go on forever, maybe so that tomorrow wouldn’t come and all the troubles it would hold. Dean doesn’t want to face the dawn and the reality, once more, that he doesn’t know how to keep his family safe.

Orgasm seems almost like a disappointment in that light, pleasure coursing through him but also the inevitable end, the conclusion, and Dean slumps over in Sam’s embrace, his younger brother’s arms and legs cast around him. His hips keep moving through it, pushing slickly into Sam’s body and shuddering. He feels his brother reach between them, hand running roughly up and down his length to bring himself off, and the sensation of it echoing all around Dean, under him.

It takes a while to regain his breath, his heart thumping away in his chest and blood rushing so quick that his ears are buzzing with it. The sensation of sex is far from foreign to him, the whole thing his modus operandi, the way he’d gotten by, but sex and sex with Sam were two completely different things. He manages to lift his head and open his eyes, looking down.

Under him, Sam is watching. His eyes are open and the light glints off of their surface, shining in patches over the hazel brown -- darker, greyer, in this light. Sam’s eyes are flicking back and forth, like he’s studying Dean, and he probably is, just like he’s always studying everything, trying to find the answers. Always trying to understand a world that doesn’t fall into the neat order that Sam demands it fall into. Dean can deal with the mess, revels in it, even -- but Sam’s always asked for something better.

It’s always confused Dean, then, that Sam would settle for him.

He pulls out with a groan, body feeling soft and over sensitive, everything a little shaky as he manages to get himself twisted to the side before collapsing to the bed. He lays there, feeling cold and sort of wet, the after effects of sex never as sexy as the build up, but too tired to do anything about it. Part of him is scared to disrupt this, to lose it by getting up and walking away -- that maybe when he comes back Sam will be closed off to him again, that he’ll have missed his chance -- but the rest of him is scared to stay and watch it happen anyway.

Sam, though, just curls all his long limbs, collects himself so easily and slips under the sheets. He holds them up for Dean as well, both of them shuffling under and Dean lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding when Sam presses up against him, the two of them one form in the center of the motel mattress, the blankets scratchy and cold but slowly beginning to warm. Sam is hot up against him, and Dean pulls him in tightly. He’s never been clingy, not really, but tonight of all nights is different. He needs the reassurance of Sam’s body, an undeniable reality.

He presses his face into his brother’s hair, feeling it stir with every breath. The world is chipping away at them, always has been and still is, but somehow, precariously, they’re still here, together. It’s only perseverance and luck that’s gotten them here, and so much has depended on circumstance. He has Sam, right now. He has his brother and they’re safe and warm, but there’s no guarantee that the next moment, the next morning, is going to bring the same. It feels too much like they’re here by chance and Dean hates that feeling.

He doesn’t believe in luck, not in it working out in favor of a Winchester anyway, and it chafes that he’s here wishing on fortune that they can make it just a little bit further. Not to a finish line, because there is no finish line, but just any little bit further. Even the barest inch.

"Sam," he murmurs with no particular purpose of destination -- just his brother’s name, and Dean presses his cheek firmer to his younger brother’s scalp, to the solidity of him.

He’s not expecting Castiel’s croon, low and heartbroken in the room. It’s not a loud noise, but in the darkness, in the constant danger of their lives, it makes Dean jump.

"Christ--" he hisses as he lifts his head, looking over at his heron, the great white bird perched on the edge of the dresser, looking out into the room but at nothing in particular. The angel calls again, a louder cry, his head swiveling about. "Cas, what the hell are you--"

"Dean," Sam interrupts, the pads of his fingers brushing Dean’s chin and pulling his attention back. Dean’s eyes flick from Castiel to his little brother.

"What?" he asks, unable to keep from glancing over at the bird as he continues to cry out, the sound inaudible to anyone but them, but still a problem, still disturbing to Dean’s frayed nerves. "The hell is _wrong_ with him--"

"He’s looking for her," Sam says softly, his voice too quiet and hurting. It brings Dean’s full attention to his brother, hand automatically coming up to brush Sam’s neck, his collar bone.

"Her?" he asks, brow furrowed.

"Ruby."

The answer, her name alone, is enough to make loss jolt through him fresh, but it’s quickly followed by confusion. Over the past twenty years Cas and Ruby had formed a kind of companionship, in on their little secret together and working as allies to fulfill their given duties, but at the start they'd been enemies. Truced enemies, enemies with a temporary common goal, but two creatures with a long history of war behind them. They'd touched from time to time, when Dean couldn't reach out to Sam sometimes he'd have Castiel reach out to Ruby instead, but their relationship had always been a bit of a mystery to Dean.

"I don’t understand," he admitted, glancing over at the angel that was supposedly his other half but who he’d never really understood. He and Cas had never been like Sam and Ruby. It doesn’t surprise him much at all that Sam knows the answer.

"They always--" he starts out, pauses, then tries again. His words are stumbling and Dean can hear the pain in them. There’ll never be a time that Ruby’s name doesn’t bring pain with it. "When we-- Whenever we were together..."

Sam’s voice goes softer then, like handling some treasured memory. A precious thing that now can never be recreated.

"Whenever we were together," he continues. "So were they."

Hearing the words, Dean thinks back to the first time Sam kissed him, that autumn in their home, warm and bright. Welcoming. Just the one thought brings back a million memories of dinners and breakfasts, holidays and everydays. Just the one thought reminds Dean of a million others, pressed to countertops or sitting out on the back porch, beer in hand. Now all those places are just ashes, a pile that’s probably been cleaned up and disposed of by now, the ashes of a life that used to belong to them.

But Dean remembers watching Castiel’s great white wing slip around Ruby’s darker form, watching their heads twist and dip, a yin yang of bodies and feathers. It’s a realization, a revelation, but it’s not surprising. The minute Sam says it, it immediately makes sense. Dean immediately understands. Maybe it was sexual maybe it wasn’t, who _knew_ how angels and demons worked in that regard, but Dean and Sam were together and Castiel and Ruby were Dean and Sam, extensions of them. Permutations of them locked away in other bodies.

And now, for the first time since her death, the two of them had reached for each other and Cas had reached out only to find...nothing. The emptiness where Ruby would forever be gone.

There’s nothing that Dean can do about that -- and god, how many times has he thought about that in the last month? Imagined, dreamed, _planned_ to get her back, to just find her, to see her re-materialize like she’d have to, she’d _have_ to, because Sam was here and she was Sam so there was no way that Sam could be here and she be gone. And yet.

And yet there’s still that empty space, the place she used to be.

"...It's the third time," Sam murmurs softly, arms around him. Dean rolls them over, blanketing Sam's body with his own, Sam's willowy arms around Dean's shoulders.

But the words don't quite connect. He doesn't have to ask. Just looks at Sam curiously and his brother clarifies, looking up at the darkened ceiling.

"It's the third time we've had to run. The third time that someone's said it'd be better if I were dead...It just keeps happening. One after the other they keep hunting us and--... There is no place for us." Sam's voice is soft in the dark, wondering almost, and Dean feels the same rudderless drifting. There is no ground to go to now. They've lost their home, or at least their refuge, three times now, always driven out with fire and violence, like the unlucky scapegoats that people fear.

Dean doesn't know what they'll do in the morning.

There’s nothing he can do about it now other than bundle Sam closer and only half for Sam’s benefit. He can only hold on tight and listen to Castiel call out for a mate that won’t answer, for the black bird that was such a pain, such an ass on the best of days but still somehow completed them. Listen to Cas call out for the partner he’d never realized was family until it was too late to tell her.

The cries are long and lonely and Dean feels the isolation of the highway try to creep back in, to creep into their bed and wash him cold and bitter.

The despair outside is trying to take him, to bring him back to its darker embrace, but Dean tightens his arms and together, for a few more minutes, he and Sam manage to keep it at bay.

\-----

When morning does come, it comes luxuriously late. Dean is glad for the rest, though he has a brief heart attack when he wakes up to find Sam gone, the other side of his bed rumpled and barren. 

It’s pretty normal for Sam to get up before him, the kid always having been a freakishly early riser, especially in a family of night owls that spent their evenings out hunting ghosts, but these days, after Dad, after the demon, after Bobby, Dean doesn’t like Sam being out of his sight. The only thing that sets his heart at ease is that Cas isn’t anywhere in the room either, and that means that Sam is nearby. After all, the changes of the last four weeks haven’t effected the constraints of Dean’s bond to the angel. Castiel is somewhere within a few hundred feet, just like always, and Dean takes that assurance to get himself up and dressed, instead of running outside naked like a crazy person, searching for his brother.

He even takes a few moments to brush the grunge off of his teeth.

When he steps outside of the motel room, he’s pulling on his jacket, tugging it down one arm as he winces his way into the sunlight and cold morning air. The area seems less desolate, less hopeless than it did the night before. The sky has cleared and the mist dissipated, leaving the tall forests brighter, if still a little imposing. Just outside of the motel parking lot the occasional car whizzes past on the highway and the bell at the motel lobby rings when someone exits, the distant sound of voices all combining to remind Dean that the world is still here. Still turning. The sun is still rising and while they may be down, they aren’t out.

And never will be, if Dean has anything to say about it.

"Hey," he announces his presence, walking forward when he spots his little brother bent over the hood of their car, reviewing a large gas station map that he has laid out across it. His hands rest on Topeka on one side and the Pacific on the other and Castiel is standing off to Sam's right, both of them serious faced -- though, for them, that’s pretty much their regular expressions. "You know, you could tell me when you get up, you little brat."

"You needed the rest," Sam replies instantly, without looking up. He moves his hand off of the Pacific and traces some line through Colorado. Dean shrugs his shoulders and pops his collar.

"Yeah, well, I didn’t need the blood pressure spike of waking up to find you gone," he grumbles, reaching out to shove Sam’s hip lightly. Sam sways a little but doesn’t look up. "Anyway," Dean continues, glancing down at the map but seeing nothing special. "You got anything?"

"Not much."

"After all that researching back at Bobby’s?" The kid had spent the last three weeks with his nose buried in books -- and given how fast Sam read, that was a lot of books to go through. Sam still had difficulty hitting a moving target and Dean could pin him just about every time in a spar, but in research, Sammy always got his man.

"I didn’t have a lot to go on, Dean," Sam responds and it’s that bitchy little brother tone, one that Dean can’t help but rise to. He smirks to himself.

"Losing your touch there, Sammy."

"I’m not losing _anything_. You try figuring out an entire puzzle from just one word. It’s not easy."

"Alright, alright," Dean drops it, because as fun as it is, they still need to have some idea where to go. They can’t just linger around the damned motel all day and at this point, all Dean has for options is ‘pick a direction.’ "So what do we have then, nothing?"

"All I had to go on was 'cowherd.’" Sam shrugs his shoulders. "I mean, there's some mythology with cowherds in it, but that doesn't tell me much."

"Why not? What does it say? Maybe there's a clue there."

"Dean," Sam says in that exasperated tone. "We can no more find a specific cowherd from myths about cowherds than we could a specific cobbler just because there's fairy tales about cobblers."

"Cobbler...like the pie?"

"Dean!"

"What?! Geez!" Dean throws his hands up in surrender. Christ, just because he doesn’t speak geek-ese...

" _Any_ way," Sam continues, snarky little tone enough to make Dean want to whap him one upside the head. "I went over to the lobby this morning and did some searching on cows and...anything freaky. It was the best I had. It’s not much but... There’s been some cattle mutilations up in Montana."

"And that’s all we got?"

"That’s all we’ve got," Sam confirms, obviously not happy with the results, but to Dean’s thinking, you can’t argue with reality. Facts are facts, and they have to work with whatever is in front of them.

"Well." Dean shrugs his shoulders. "Guess we’re headed to Montana."

It takes an hour to actually get going -- longer than their usual, but they take the time to count their supplies. Last night wasn’t really the time to go cataloging things, but they need to know what they have -- and what they don’t have -- before they do anything. There’s clothes and a few weapons, a good bowie knife that Sammy ganks and the gun that Sam had gotten from Bobby’s basement, which Dean tucks into the back of his pants. There’s not much ammo and no salt, no holy water. There’re no flasks or long term supplies and Dean’s already making lists in his head for if they make it to a Walmart.

He’ll have to hit up a bar first though, see if he can’t hustle them some cash.

Sam manages to pickpocket some guy’s wallet before they leave the motel, which gives them enough cash to at least get breakfast, but they decide to dump the cards. They can’t take the risk of being traced at this point. 

They hunch over the map together while they eat and strategize, working out the best route to Montana -- the best being not the fastest, but the fastest one that won’t put them on too many major roads. Dean doesn’t know if he’s being paranoid or not, but he’s not chancing anything at this point. If keeping Sam safe means staying under the radar, then Dean’s willing to dig deep. 

It’s mid-morning by the time they head out, and the sun is casting bright light down on the straight long highway, the sight less oppressive than it had been the night before. It seems less endless, and the cars they pass on the way remind Dean each time that things aren’t over with yet. They still have time. They still have a chance, a _fighting_ chance, if only they choose to take it. Above the car, Cas is soaring along with them, outside of Dean’s range of vision, but he knows he’s there, just like he always is, just like he always has been.

Montana isn’t a long trip from Wyoming, and Dean settles into it, lets the cool mountain air slip through the half-open windows and the scent of the pine remind him how much he used to love this: driving. Just driving. Driving forever and the simplicity of every moment slipping so easily under the tires, leaving all the troubles in the dust behind them and moving forward to something else unknown.

For a moment, at least, Dean can pretend that the unknown is something good like it used to be: living strings-free, living without roots or restrictions.

They sleep in the car on the side of the road that night, Sammy’s big, bulky body noodled in against Dean’s side like he's still some little kid, and Dean smiles. It’s rough and uncomfortable, cold as fuck, even though winter is only just starting, but they buddle up under the blankets they stole from the motel and make do.

Dean sees the blemishes where he didn’t before. The freedom of the road feels less like freedom and more like homelessness, and the restrictions of settling down less like restrictions and more like safety. When this is over, because he believes that it’ll be over, Dean promises himself, promises Sam in his head that he won’t fight him about settling down anymore.

He kisses Sam’s temple and decides that they’ll find a new home together.

In the morning, back a little cramped and a kink in his neck, Dean starts them out again, crossing over the border into Montana just as noon passes, and slowly the forests drop away, the car chugging up and over the hilly landscape. They’re too far east to be in the foothills of the Rockies, but the earth is still far from even, so Dean is a little surprised when they roll through a valley and out on to a long stretch of open highway, the clumps of snow on either side of the road appearing less and less until they're gone.

The wind is whistling and there’s only a few clouds in the sky, the car rattling gamely as they move forward. Sam is sitting on the passenger’s side with one foot up on the seat and his body hunched over, sitting like the creepy little monkey he is, and Dean turns on the radio. Somehow, out in the middle of nowhere, he manages to find a classic rock station, and it takes most of his willpower to keep from singing along.

Of course, Sam has to go and ruin it all.

About an hour later he sits up a little, clearing his throat as he looks over his map, glancing around as they pass by farmland.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"I dunno." Dean shrugs, one hand on the wheel. "You’re the one with the map."

"You’re the one driving! What highway are we on?"

"Whatever one’s on the map!" Dean replies defensively.

"Dean, _we_ aren’t on the map. You have to tell me what intersections we’ve passed."

"What intersections?" Dean replies, glancing to the side only to see Sammy’s bitchface. "Oh c’mon, Sammy! We’re out in bum-fuck farmland. It’s cows, pasture, cows, fences, cows and this road. That’s it. That’s what they’ve got on the menu."

Sam grumbles and unfolds the map even more, snapping it taut with his fingers to voice his displeasure. Dean rolls his eyes.

A second later, without warning, there’s a huge white bird screeching in front of the windshield, claws clattering against the metal of the roof and both Dean and Sam are yelling and cursing as Dean automatically swerves the car over to the side of the road. He slams on the break as they reach the shoulder, heart thumping away in his chest as he turns the engine off and kicks open the door.

"Cas!" he bellows, watching the angel soaring up above them again, as if he didn’t just almost cause a car accident. It's not as cold as Dean was expecting, but he has bigger fish to fry. Or birds, as it were. "Cas, get down here!"

"What," Sam starts, getting out of the passenger’s side, feet in the gravel. "The hell."

"Cas!" Dean yells again, standing in the middle of the road and not giving a damn. The angel deigns to flutter down, big wings scooping the air as his feet stretch out, touching pavement as he straightens the sleeves of his trenchcoat.

"There is something here," he announces calmly, not a waver in his voice.

"Do you think next time, maybe, you could inform us of that _without_ trying to kill us?" Dean asks, gesturing down the road to where he left some nice black skid marks on display.

"Dean," Sam says, voice a little strange.

"What?" Dean rounds, head jerking over his shoulder to look at his brother, who is looking up and down the road, both directions.

"...When was the last time you saw another car?"

"I dunno."

"You _don’t know?_ Dean, do you notice _anything_ when you’re driving?"

"Yeah, I do, _Sam_ ," he replies tetchy and displeased. "But do you wanna be a bigger bitch about it, maybe?"

"You don’t know what highway we’re on, or when you last saw a car--"

Dean throws his arms up in the air.

"I told you, Sam! We’re out in the middle of nowhere! It’s Deliverance, Montana, population thirteen people. We're not exactly on Route 66 here." He waves his arms around, indicating the flat, open highway in either direction, completely devoid of traffic. "What do you want from me here?"

"Do you hear that?" Sam asks, apropos of nothing.

"Hear what?"

"Shh!"

Dean’s just about to protest the indignity of being _shhed_ by his little brother when the wind whistles in a way the wind never would, and he stops, pulling himself straight. The breeze is blowing thick around him, running through his short hair and tugging at his clothes, twisting across the open, golden plains on either side of the highway, stretching forever with no mountains or forests to be seen. The sun is offset in the sky just slightly, only white fluffy clouds to disrupt the blue, shining down across the land unmarred and the dark wooden fence on either side of the highway casting a shadow.

It’s perfect. Idyllic.

And it’s only just then that Dean realizes it looks absolutely nothing like Montana.

"What the--" he murmurs as he turns, looking all around him, but before he can say anything else, that same sound distracts him again. He finds his vision pulled to the one tree, the one obstruction in the perfect vista, and how the hell did he miss that? How the hell had he been standing here for five minutes and not immediately notice the tree on the side of the road, just on the other side of the fence from them?

And from the other side of the trunk, Dean can just make out the strains of a flute being played, a quick and cheerful little tune, and beneath it, low and barely audible, the sound of voices laughing.

"...Cas," he says, but it’s more of a question. He doesn’t look at the angel behind him.

"I don’t know, Dean," comes the response, and that’s worrying. The wind blows long and hollow and Dean feels it buffet at his back, as if stirring him to walk across the road and right up to the tree. Dean frowns and ignores it, instead walking to the side, making his way around slowly. He doesn’t check on traffic now -- he’s pretty sure that there won’t be anyone coming from either direction. He keeps the distance between himself and the tree as wide as he can, edging around until he can make out the figure on the other side.

It’s a man. That much is clear.

It’s a man leaned back against the tree, wearing jeans and a baggy jacket, a long silver flute held up to his lips and slightly stubby fingers moving back and forth along it, playing it with practiced ease. He has dark brown hair and bangs that are being pulled by the wind, but there’s no one else there. Dean’s certain he can hear feminine laughter, from more than one source, but he doesn’t see anyone but the man.

Dean’s expression sets, stony and serious.

"Anything?" he asks again, not having to check to know that his guardian is near him.

"I..." the angel starts but pauses. "I see him, of course. But...I cannot tell you anything else."

"Is he an angel? Demon? Or...deva or whatever?" Dean asks, hating to go in blind, but it’s obvious they’re already in this thing’s web, whatever it is. 

"It is not a deva," Castiel answers, sounding certain. "But it is not an asura either."

That just makes Dean frown deeper. Back on the hunt, he was fine with throwing himself into unknowns, loved the thrill of it. But that was when it was just his life on the line -- not Sam’s. And the game they’re playing now is on a far greater level than some salt and burn. The complete lack of knowledge, the lack of _power_ , makes Dean’s skin itch. He pulls out the gun from the back of his pants even though he knows it’ll do no good. He takes it more for the comfort of the metal and leather in the grip of his palm.

Then, with no other choices that he can see, he moves forward.

They go over the fence, leaving the car behind as they step into the field. This is no crop growing land, instead covered with yellowish grass -- not dead or rotted, just paler than green. In the distance Dean can see a herd of cattle moving around, grazing sedately, and under his feet the grass flattens softly without a sound. The whole setting is so peaceful that it sets Dean’s teeth on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop.

They approach the tree, Dean holding his weapon in both hands but lowered, ready to lift it but not wanting to introduce any more hostility to the situation than necessary. For a second, Dean thinks he sees a ripple of motion behind the man, sees something shimmer down the length of the tree and into the ground.

"Don’t mind the gopi," a voice says, and Dean’s head jerks up to find the man smiling, the flute lowered from his lips. "They won’t hurt anyone."

There’s that laughter again, a giggle that echoes through the soil, and Dean sees the land move, just barely, the form of a woman under its skin, sliding along as if swimming through water, then vanishing again. He catches movement out of the corners of his eyes in a few more spots and he steps back, skin crawling.

"The hell..." he mutters.

"It’s fine," the man by the tree dismisses again, pushing himself to stand, waving one hand in the air like it’s nothing. "They just like to play is all."

"You’re the cowherd, aren’t you?" Sam asks, taking one step forward before Dean quickly shifts in front of him, putting himself between Sam and the potential danger.

"I am," the man replies with a smile too slick, twirling the silver flute in his fingers. "Or, well. I’m a guy with some cows. So I guess that counts."

"So we were right. About the cattle mutilations." Sam sounds a little smug -- triumphant, as if wandering into this thing’s web is worth it so long as it turns out he was right. 

"No." The cowherd shakes his head, chuckling as he puts his hands on his hips. "Sorry, buddy. You were headed in totally the wrong direction to find me. So I figured I’d just...bring you to me. As if I’d mutilate my beautiful herd...” He tuts. “That was some vegetarian vampires you were tracking, turns out."

"Vampires?" Dean scoffs. "There’s no such thing."

"Oh, Dean." The cowherd smiles.

"I don’t recall telling you my name," Dean growls. There’s a click as he flips off the safety and lifts his pistol.

"You wanna be a big man? Take your shot." The cowherd raises his arms to either side, opening himself up to any attack. "But you know you can’t hurt me. You already know that because you know I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought you could do any damage. So please. Let’s put the weapons away and talk like... Well. Like civil folk."

Dean stays stock still, body locked and trained and he feels better sighting down a weapon at...whatever this thing is. But he knows the words are true. He knew they were true before they were spoken, and he knew the gun wouldn’t do any good the moment he lifted it. And it isn’t just that they were brought here: they came looking for this thing. Searching to find it specifically.

It takes effort, but Dean slowly lowers the pistol. It takes a moment more before he lets one hand drop, both coming to hang at his sides.

"Alright," he says grudgingly. "Spill."

"Oh no," the man shakes his head. "That’s not how this works. _You_ crazy kids came looking for _me_. You wanna talk..." He shrugs and smiles, irritatingly carefree. "Talk."

"Who are you?" Sam asks instantly, shifting up to stand by Dean’s side. 

" _Very_ good question, Sammy--"

"Don’t call me that," Sam growls. "Only he gets to call me that."

Dean doesn’t have words for the blossom of warmth inside of his chest at that.

"Fine, fine-- _Sam_. In any case, I have many names. More than you can imagine. The last man to come through here though, he called me _Trickster_. I kind of liked that." The man-- _Trickster_ smiles to himself, looking up at the sky. "I like to play jokes you see. Little pranks every now and again. Apparently, though, not everyone has a sense of humor."

"That doesn’t really answer my question," Sam replies, his voice tetchy.

"Then ask better questions," the Trickster shoots back.

“Thought you said it was _good_.”

“Can always be better, kiddo.”

"Alright." Dean takes a step forward, having curiosities of his own. "We heard the demon was looking for you -- we heard about it three weeks ago, but it could have been on his to-do list for even longer than that."

"He was looking for me, it’s true. Still is, in fact."

"Then how the hell did we get here before him?" They’d only set out with the goal two days before. Sam had sunk plenty of research time into it, sure, but it wasn’t like any of it had resulted in much.

"Because only the people I want to find me can find me. The demon...bores me."

"And we don’t? You wanted us to find you?"

"You two... Well. Let’s just say that the three of us are old friends," the Trickster responds, too much knowledge in his face, more than Bobby or any hunter Dean had ever met. More, even, than the demon. And the Trickster might not be burning down their house and trying to kill them, but Dean’s not sure he trusts him any more than the demon himself. The demon, at least, wants something.

"We’re not friends," Dean responds.

"We’ve never even _met_ you," Sam chimes in, sounding more curious than anything. Dean doesn’t like how much that tone, that curiosity, gives away. He doesn’t want this thing having any more power over them than it already does.

"Well." The Trickster shrugs once. "Not _this_ time, anyway."

Dean frowns at that, trying to puzzle it out, but it’s Sam’s place to try and get the whole picture, Sam’s prerogative to try and make everything fit. Dean just needs what he needs. He just needs to know enough to keep them alive.

"Fine," Dean says, before Sam can launch in with any questions. "We’re friends. Big ol’ buddies. So then, you wanna let your pals in on the big secret? What the hell is this demon after? What does he want from us?"

"The same thing he’s always wanted."

"And what’s that?"

"Revenge."

He's heard it before but it still causes Dean to sneer, head jerking back, because _no_. No, goddamnit. The demon was the monster who’d burned down his childhood home, who’d taken his mother from him. The demon was the target of their vengeance, the one upon whom retribution was _brought,_ not the one who sought it. Just the thought makes anger boil and churn in Dean’s veins. His hands curl into fists.

"And what the fuck happened to him that requires revenge? What the hell did _we,_ a four year old and a fucking _baby_ , do to warrant being hunted by a fucking demon all our lives?" he spits, lips curled at just the thought. The demon has taken so much from him in his life, worn down his home and his family to just this, to just Sam and Cas standing next to him in some nowhere field. It doesn’t get to take Dean’s righteous anger from him too.

"You already know who you are, Dean," the Trickster replies calmly.

"Yeah, I do, and it’s not this stupid god thing. I’m _Dean Winchester_ , not some deva idol or whatever the fuck you people seem to think I am. I just want you to leave us all alone."

"You can brush it off as much as you want, but fact of the matter is this life is only the result of all the ones that came before, and you can’t escape that. You made the choice to enter the cycle, Dean." The Trickster looks strange, almost sad then. "You and Sam both. And until you complete whatever it is you’re staying here to complete, you will be part of that cycle."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Dean responds sarcastically. "You wanna tell me anything _helpful?"_

"Anger lasts a long time, Dean. You of all people know that. The yellow-eyed demon lost something, a long time ago, and for better or worse, he blames you, Sam." The Trickster’s eyes flick over to Sam. Then, strangely, back behind Sam. "You gonna stay quiet back there, Castiel? Hope that I don’t notice?"

It’s the third time in under a month that someone other than him or Sam has addressed Castiel, and it makes Dean just as uncomfortable as it had the first time. It feels strange and overly personal, like the Trickster is seeing him naked or something, seeing some more private part of his soul that only Sam should be able to see and touch.

Cas steps forward, no point in denying it, trenchcoat shifting around his calves. What surprises Dean, though, is the way the angel’s eyes stay down, as if in deference.

"...You’re not a deva," Cas says.

"No." The Trickster shakes his head, an almost expectant expression on his face.

"But you’re not an asura, either."

"Nor a werewolf or a vampire or a wendigo, nor any of the other thousands of things you could think of. But this isn’t what you really want to ask me. There’s something else you want to know. Something more important." The Trickster cants his head down, looking up at Castiel under the ridge of his brow. Dean brushes his thumb back and forth over the grip of the gun, a motion of familiarity, something to hold on to in this war of gods and demons, things he doesn’t understand. Things he can’t touch.

"I--" Castiel’s brow furrows, his expression confused and searching, eyes skipping over the ground. It makes him look strangely young, and it throws Dean off, makes him uncomfortable to see. Cas looks up then, hesitant and hurting. "...I have been lied to, haven’t I?"

"Yes," the Trickster responds, looking like he regrets that fact. "I’m sorry."

He sounds like he means it.

"I do not understand." Castiel shakes his head, looking for all the world like a child who’d lost sight of their parent, but Dean doesn’t know how to handle that. He regrets, sometimes, that they're not more like Sam and Ruby. Cas never reached out for Dean in his moments of trial, never tried to hug Dean when he cried or road along on the angel's shoulder like Ruby used to with Sam. Sure, Dean had some memories of his childhood -- holding on to the tails of Cas’s coat, tripping along after him, but it wasn’t the same. Cas had been like a big, personal, teddy bear. 

They were the same person. They were family. But Dean still doesn’t know how to reach out to the angel now, doesn’t even know if Cas’d want it. 

"I _am_ sorry," the Trickster repeats. "What’s been done to you and the other garuda, on both sides... It’s not fair."

" _Why?_ " Cas expels on a breath. He lifts his hands, holds them palm out as if he can grasp the answers with his fingertips. "He killed her. He killed her and I don't understand. I don't know why this is happening. We both did as we were told. And now I have done things I never thought I would do, broken laws I never thought I would break and I-- What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Why? Why did they _lie_ to us?"

"Castiel." The Trickster takes a step forward, resting his hand on one of Cas's wrists. His expression is gentle, but there's a firmness underneath that Dean can only just perceive, but Dean is too busy shuddering at the contact. "Did you really think that you were strong enough to contain half the soul of a god? To contain _half_ of the Creator...?"

"Hey," Sam objects on Cas's behalf, taking a step forward.

"Your people have been lied to for a very long time, Castiel," the Trickster continues, looking up at the deva, trying to catch his eyes. "But you also had the arrogance to think that you could embody half the soul of a cosmic creature on a scale that you cannot even begin to imagine."

"Hey!" Sam's objection is louder now, angrier, and Dean feels it too.

"Tone it down, asshole," he growls to the Trickster, but whatever's going on between him and Cas, they both ignore Sam and Dean, the Trickster continuing.

"You hold but the barest sliver, the tiniest scraping of something far beyond you. And even that is enough to fill you to the brim. Even that leaves you on the edge of ecstatic madness." The Trickster turns Castiel's hand over, placing his other one over the back of it. "And Ruby was the same."

"I don't understand," Cas responds, helpless. "How can we keep them from remembering, from _becoming_ , if we are not enough weight to tug the soul into the next life?"

"Because you were never meant to keep them from becoming. You're not the failsafe system, Castiel. You're the red button."

Dean doesn't get the analogy, but he can see Sam's eyes widen, can see the betrayal written all over Cas's usually inexpressive features.

"What are you talking about?" Dean demands, hating this, hating being left on the outside -- the three of them the only ones not in on the secret and forced to play these stupid games. It feels like this is always what they're doing: trying to play catch up on some cosmic level.

The Trickster's eyes are fixed on Cas's face, and it's a moment before they flick away, shift to focus on Dean, still irritatingly unperturbed.

"The war between the asuras and the devas has lasted for countless lifetimes. They weren't about to let some truce keep them from a good fight. Sure, they've stopped the open hostilities, but both sides are just waiting for the other to mess it up. So they started stock piling and preparing, and then the other side had to prepare as well, which meant the first side had to be _more_ prepared and before you know it, we had a full on Cold War on our hands." His gaze flicks between Sam and Dean. "Complete with nukes and everything."

"Castiel and Ruby," Sam says, his brow pinched. "That's--... Ruby was what? The switch that was meant to set me off? Make me go nuclear...?"

"Yes, Sam," the Trickster replies. "Top of the class, kiddo, just like always. She was never meant to keep you human. She was there for the asuras to kill -- to make you suffer that existential pain of losing a part of yourself. To make you ascend and destroy the world. But no one ever wanted to hit the switch because the other side had a weapon of their own." He looks over at Dean. "And if they awakened Shiva, they knew the devas would retaliate by awakening you too."

"But they _did_ hit the switch." Sam's voice is a scrape of pain and anger, something too hurt. A wound still leaking infection. His hand is clenched in a fist over his chest, expression twisted. "They killed her. They killed her right in front of me and--" His breathing hitches. "They _killed_ her."

"Only one man killed your beloved, Sam. And he belongs to no people."

"But why would he risk it?" Sam asks, pressing. He shakes his head. "He had to know--... He had to know what it would do. I could... _feel_ it, back then. I could feel... _something_. And if I'm so strong why would he kill Ruby right in front of me? It doesn't make _sense_."

"He’s angry. He lost something a long time ago and then he lost himself. He thinks he knows what he wants now and how to get it. But the truth is that he’s as mortal as all the rest. He understands only what a mortal can understand. Sees only what a mortal can see. For him, the earth curves and the road disappears behind the horizon."

"But not for you?" Sam asks, eyes narrowing.

"I’m... Well. I play my own games."

"Games, right," Dean chimes in then, naturally suspicious. "So why should we believe anything that you say?"

"You don't have to." The Trickster shrugs, dropping Cas's hand to put both of his own into his pockets, rocking on the heels of his feet. "You three came looking for me, remember? You wanna doubt everything I say? That's up to you. It's no skin off of my back."

"Then what _is_ your game? Why do you care?"

"Hey, I'm just here to enjoy myself. It gets busy -- all the work you two left me with -- but I deal. Sometimes I just need a little break, though, you know?"

Of course, Dean doesn't know and he doubts Sam does either. No matter how many people tell them they're some epic deities, that they play on this cosmic level, he still just feels like Dean. He still just feels like Sam's big brother listening to a bunch of pompous windbags talk about things way above his pay grade.

And mostly, it just makes Dean feel tired.

He just wants to pack them both back into the car and drive away, find themselves somewhere safe and quiet. As if such a place exists.

"Cas," Dean starts, glancing at his angel then back at the Trickster. Dean can still clearly remember Sam's eyes glowing with ether, bright and flaring outwards, particles drifting up into the air. He can still remember his brother's face just before he went unconscious -- he hasn't thought about it much, but he knows now. Sam had been ascending. He'd been becoming...whatever the hell they were, until Cas had tied Sam back to the earth. "Cas bound himself to Sam, after Ruby was killed. If we're not sharing half a soul, then why did it work? I'm still me and Sam's still Sam... So why did it work?"

"That I can't answer for you," the Trickster replies with another careless shrug. "You two have always been way too wrapped up in each other, even all the way back then -- there's you two and then there's the world, and the rest of us are just left to guess at what goes on between you. Maybe it's not Castiel at all. Maybe he's just the bridge. Maybe it's through him that Sam can feel your humanity, Dean. You've always been his catalyst. And his anchor. He would stay for _you_. When it comes to that, though, only the two of you have ever had any of the answers."

Dean glances to the side, looking over at his younger brother. He's unsure of that answer, of how satisfactory it is. He can't feel Sam at the end of any connection, just like he can't feel Cas either. He doesn't like depending on something he can't see, something he can't hear or feel. An ephemeral something that may or may not exist. 

But looking at Sam's face, at the set of his brow and the slope of his cheek, at the way his eyes don't waver -- Dean realizes he doesn't care. If Sam needs him, however Sam needs him, Dean will be there. Dean doesn't have much use for faith, but he knows this much: he believes in Sam. No matter what his father said, no matter what any of the hunters say, any of the demons or angels or any of the rest: Sam isn't evil. Sam will never be evil, and he doesn't need Dean in order to stay good. He does that just fine on his own.

And if Dean has to run the rest of his life just to stay near Sam, well. He thinks that's an acceptable price to pay.

"...Let's go," he says simply, speaking straight to Sam, the edge of his lips curling. His brother glances at him, expression distraught.

"But--"

Dean shakes his head. Sam always wants to know. He wants to figure everything out. But the fact of the matter is that no matter what the story is, no matter what the answers are, Dean doesn't want any part of it. The Trickster has a lot of stories to tell but he's right about one thing: there's Sam and Dean, and then there's the world. Dean doesn't want to concern himself with gods and wars, with karma and elaborate plots. The Trickster doesn't have any answers to the questions that matter, because if this thing has really been going on for so long before they were born, then it'll go on long after they die, too. Dean doesn't expect to solve all the world's problems. 

He's glad just to be able to give Sam some peace.

He holds out his hand.

"C'mon, Sammy. There's nothing here," he says.

Sam looks torn, glancing between the Trickster and Dean, the need for knowledge warring with his desire to stay together, but Dean doesn't doubt Sam's choice. They've chosen each other again and again, every time, and there's no surprise when Sam deflates, lets out a long breath of air as he lifts his hand, fitting it easily into Dean's.

In the distance, there's the low rumble of thunder.

Dean glances up, looking behind them to the horizon, darkened now, black clouds rolling deceptively slow through the sky. He can just make out their hazy edges, the occasional flicker of lightening within. It's too far off to see if there's rain but the wind picks up from the ground, scattering dirt and blades of grass, and Dean can smell the scent of an incoming storm.

"I thought you said that only people you want to find you can find you?" Sam asks, eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Yeeeah," the Trickster replies, looking alarmingly mystified as he watches as well, his tone not reassuringly full of knowledge. "I did say that... Was pretty certain it was _true_ too. Huh."

"Shit," Dean mutters.

Around them, the laughter of the maidens vanishes, their movement sinking well below the earth -- in hiding, and Dean's coming around to the belief that that's a pretty good idea. His hand tightens around Sam's.

"...You know. You two might want to book it," the Trickster suggests, and Dean's inclined to agree. He doesn't bother to check with the other man, just pulls Sam away, the two of them running towards the fence. When Dean hops it, he turns to help Sam over and sees the Trickster and the herd of cows are gone, the field empty now, the yellow grass gone pale, stirring in the strong wind. Already the dark clouds have moved from the horizon to halfway to them, curling forward at a rapid rate. Above them Dean can hear Castiel giving out warning cries, white wings circling.

"C'mon," Dean says to no one in particular, Sam hopping down on the other side of the fence and the two of them booking it across the highway. There's still no one out there, and Dean digs the keys out of his pocket, yanking the driver's side door open and sliding in.

"C'mon, c'mon..." He repeats as he gets the car started, watching Sam run around to the passenger's side. He waits only until Sam's door slams before pulling them out onto the road, gunning the piss poor engine and hearing every mechanism in the car complain as they peel out. The tires squeal in protest, but the black clouds are already just behind them, roiling and rolling, and Dean compresses the gas even more, hands fighting with the wheel to even her out. The highway is straight and long, and when they're steady he accelerates even more, watching the needle on the odometer tick upwards.

"C'mon, baby, keep going..." he mutters to himself, to the hunk of metal under him, seeing Sam twist around in his seat, looking back. 

"What the hell is that..." his brother murmurs, as if that's what's relevant right now.

"Something _bad_ ," Dean responds. He doesn't have to care what it is if they can get away from it. They can concern themselves with absent curiosities later, but a giant storm that can scare something like the Trickster away is something that Dean doesn't really want to meet. He may not have trusted the Trickster, but he trusts Cas, and Cas had a healthy fear of the other man. That's enough to let Dean know that something like this is bad news.

"It's catching up," Sam informs him needlessly.

"I can see that, Sam!" Dean snaps in return, leaning forward like his weight is going to make some kind of difference. The gas pedal is all the way to the floor now, the engine revving hard and giving all it's got, but it's no super-charged machine. It's a car that was rebuilt from scrap in Singer's yard and Dean knows he can only be thankful that it's not falling apart under his hands. He glances in his side mirror and sees nothing but darkness behind him, ominous clouds spread across the sky and the ground cloaked in their shadow below. There is no rain; this no natural storm, and though the thunder rumbles, there's no cracks of lightening. Occasionally he'll see a flicker in the clouds, but no more -- it's moving too quick for that.

"Shit, shit..." he mutters to himself, knuckles going white around the steering wheel. Behind him he can hear a groaning, a growing roar. Under his hands the car begins to shake, and at first he thinks that it's the car itself, not able to keep up with the pressures being put on it. But then he realizes that it's not the car at all but the road itself. The _ground_ is shaking.

That's never a good sign.

But a second later it stops, and everything goes quiet. The roar ceases and the world goes near silent, everything save for the soft whistle of the wind by the car as they cruise down the highway. Dean's breathing hard, as if he'd just run from the storm and not driven. He casts his gaze around, looking up and behind them, the clouds still there but silent, slowing down.

"Dean..." Sam murmurs, still turned around in his seat, looking behind them. The wind comes in through the half open window, blowing their hair and clothes, and Dean's eyes keep flicking between the road and the storm.

"...Is that it?" he finally dares to ask. "Did we make it?"

Sam doesn't reply. He doesn't get the chance.

A second later something invisible hits them like a truck, throwing the car into the air and end over end, the terrible rage of sound echoing through Dean's head -- metal twisting, air compressing, wind roaring -- as he's tossed about, hitting the roof of the car and then flying down into the seat again, only to repeat the motion. He can't see where they're going, what's happening, can't make out up from down, but then a second later his head meets hard with the felt covered metal of the roof and it doesn't matter.

The world fades out to silence.

\-----

Dean dreams of snow.

It's falling on his cheeks, single chilly points hitting his skin like needle pricks, breath coming out in long hot plumes, steam rising and dissipating in the cold air. It blends into the grey clouds above, the sky colorless and never-ending, a kind of serenity that Dean remembers only distantly, dancing at the back of his memories. He's walking down a road in a place that he's certain he knows, and he looks back at himself and smiles. The air is still, calm, and he breathes in.

When his eyes flutter open he sees grey ash raining from the sky, drifting down from the black clouds, so deep and dark that they hide the sun, so that Dean can't even tell if it's day or night. The ash falls onto his cheeks, has fallen in his hair, and he shakes his head, feeling it scatter. His arms and shoulder ache, and he tries to twist them, grunting when he finds his hands are bound over his head, ropes cutting tight into his skin and his head pounding with the pain of the accident.

The accident.

"Ah, look who's deigned to join us," a voice says.

Dean looks up, manages to get his eyes to focus slowly, vision tilting wildly for a second before he sees the demon, the yellow-eyed demon, standing by the other wall, looking over his shoulder at Dean. It takes another moment for Dean to see beyond the demon, to see where his hand is gripping Sam's cheeks, holding his head in place, a mutinous expression on Sam's face. Dean's brother is bound the same as him -- arms above his head, wrists tied together and ropes nailed into a wall. However long Dean's been out, it's obvious Sam's been out less, him and demon in the middle of some kind of conversation, and that makes Dean tug against his bonds, consciousness coming back hard and bright and sudden.

"Get the hell away from him, you son of a bitch," Dean growls, back arching out, the balls of his feet pressed to the floor, but he doesn't have any leverage. Not enough to get out anyway.

"Just woke up and already full of demands." The demon tsks and turns to Sam. "Is he always like this in the mornings?"

Sam doesn't respond, just glares balefully at the monster.

"I'm sure you'd know, wouldn't you?" the demon pushes, and Dean can only see a quarter of his face, but that's enough to see the oily smile. "Such a naughty boy, aren't you, Sammy, crawling into big brother's bed? Of course, incest was _all_ the rage back in the day. Not looked on so friendly now, though, is it?"

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," Sam grinds out, his head still in the demon's grasp.

"How'd you find us anyway?" Dean asks, not actually caring but trying to get the monster's attention off of Sam. He feels a little of the tension in his chest lessen when the demon's hand drops from Sam's face and he steps away.

"I have my ways," he answers blithely, strolling over to a table set up in the middle of the room -- what's left of it anyway. They're in some shack, most of it disintegrated with age. The wood is stained with black and soot, the remains of some fire long past, the roof gone save for a couple of rafters, and half the front wall collapsed. It gives Dean a full view of the dark sky and a small vantage out into the landscape, but there's not enough light to see far. Not enough to tell where they are.

"You exorcised my daughter, you see... But not before she'd managed to mark you. Took her a couple of weeks to climb her way back out of the lower realms, and I'll tell you what, she's not pleased about that -- but once she told me what to look for it wasn't hard at all. You even led me to the man I'd been looking for. He skipped the scene of course, but he knows now. What I need him to know, anyway." The demon leans against the table, picking up a knife to pick his nails with. "I like how you came back here. Back to Kansas, where it all started. It's all very... _thematic_."

Dean curses, knowing that stupid Trickster had brought them somewhere else, but he hadn't thought it'd been across half the damned country. He hadn't thought it'd been the one state he avoided at all costs.

"I even heard your daddy was on the way," the demon remarks casually, and Dean's blood runs cold. "Seems you underestimated Bobby Singer again -- had a tracker on that car of yours. Of course, having said that, they'd probably have figured things out without it, the ruckus I'm making. Omens for miles, old friend. Like a big supernatural rubber stamp over half the state."

"You leave him alone," Dean demands, his anger for his father still there, still true, but he still can't wish the man dead. He'd kill John if he had to, if he _had_ to, to keep Sam safe, but he still doesn't want to see his father laid out, and not by this. Not by the same demon that killed their mother. Dean'd be happy if John stayed away from them for the rest of their lives, but there's still a part of him, some long hidden little boy part, that wants to know his father is out there somewhere. Unseen, perhaps, but still part of the world.

"Oh Dean," the demon smiles, shaking his head. "He's not my concern at all. Nor should he be yours."

There's the sound of shoes on creaky wood and a young woman walks up into what remains of the shack, dark curly hair hanging around her shoulders.

"Ah, there you are," the demon says, pushing himself up. "Are we clear?"

"We're clear," the woman responds, hips cocking to the side in an eerily familiar way. Dean narrows his eyes.

"Dean, Sam, I'm sure you remember my daughter..." The demon gestures to the woman -- _Meg_ , Dean remembers -- his smile unctuous and bleeding across his face. "She was a gift. From you, in fact." The demon turns to look at Sam. "But you wouldn't remember that. You have the privilege of just leaving all the sins of your lives behind you and starting over again, whenever you want, while the rest of us deal with your mess."

His smile fades then, expression turning darker, and Sam responds in kind.

"And you think that's _my_ fault? You're the one that's been chasing me around with a chip on your shoulder for who knows how long. Whatever it was I did to piss you off, I don't even _remember_ it," he spits.

"So that absolves you, does it?" the demon asks, striding over. Meg glances over at Dean with a small smirk but says nothing. "You get to do whatever you want and the rest of the world just has to live with it." The demon sneers. "Beautiful Shiva, who can burn the world in the light of his laughter. I worshiped you. I _worshiped_ you, and you took the one thing from me that I truly desired. You took my life's work and burnt it to the ground."

"I. Don't. Remember!" Sam yells right back in his face, unafraid. "No matter what you do I'm not going to remember something I _didn't do._ Whoever I was back then, it's not who I am now!"

"My vengeance doesn't require your memories," the demon hisses, flying up to Sam with preternatural speed, a hush in and out of black smoke, and then he's there, right up in Sam's face, fist pressed to the wall. "It is no flash in a pan, nothing quick or easy. It has burned as an ember for hundreds of years, _thousands_ of years. I have waited. I have swallowed it down and tasted it in the back of my mouth for lifetimes that you could so easily brush aside. Now or then you live without consequence -- a god above us or a man below, you dance beyond us, _Lord_. While the rest of us suffer you lived in beauty and even now, even _now_ when you are meant to be being punished you still live without consequence. When each life is over, you move on to the next one -- but _I_ never forgot."

The demon leans in close, far too close for Dean's comfort and he struggles against the wall again, only to have Meg's hand press against the center of his chest.

"Ah-ah," she scolds, smiling.

"It was _I_ that sought the soma," the demon admits, low but still audible to Dean, even a few feet away. "It was _I_ who convinced the devas and asuras to dredge the milk ocean for the secret of immortality. Of _god_ hood. And when they found the poison instead, I knew it was the perfect punishment for you, for the Lord of the asuras who'd betrayed us all. You were our god. _Ours_ , and yet you sided with the devas and destroyed Tripura. Destroyed our _home_. I couldn't kill you, but then it occurred to me...If you were mortal, you could be killed, and that would be almost as good as becoming a god myself."

He curls one finger down Sam's cheek and Sam jerks his head to the side, eyes burning.

"If I sided against you--" Sam says, "--then whatever I did, I know it was the right thing."

The demon bangs his fist against the wall, teeth bared and bright like a tiger's.

"You _betrayed_ us! You betrayed your own worshipers, your own people-- For _him_." The demon's hand flew back, gesturing to Dean. "For your enemy, your great adversary. You two were meant to be at opposition, meant to be gods to your people, but you were always obsessed with each other, in battle or not. You were sworn enemies, but you drank the poison together, so that you'd enter the cycle of reincarnation together." The demon smirks, but it's cold and bitter, full of anger too old to be calculated. "You wanted your battle to be eternal. To never win or lose but to be forever locked in combat -- ever locked in that deadly dance with one another. Even in my victory you denied me triumph. Even then, watching you drink the poison, smiling that smile, I knew you'd still won."

He backs off slightly, pushing himself off of the wall but still looking at Sam, his face more closed off now, not as dangerously close to the edge.

"I killed you, the first time. You were a child when I found you in your first human incarnation. I killed you and it brought me joy. But you were just reborn. Born again with no memory of my vengeance. It made it meaningless. So I killed you again. For lifetimes I would chase you down and end you -- and for a while it felt good. You were nothing -- a blind, helpless worm, no great god of destruction, no brilliant Lord of fire and the heavens. You were pathetic in my hands and so easily crushed. And yet, for all my power, you continued to live. For every time I ended you, you'd come back, laughing with innocence. The god that laughed and burned the three purams..." His lip curls. "You'd smile that same smile that ended Tripura, and I'd know that it didn't matter. No matter how painfully I slaughtered you, you'd just come back, no memory of it. For all my power, even as a worthless human you still bested me."

"So how is now any different?" Sam asks. "You're gonna kill me now right? Well, go ahead."

"Sam!" Dean yells, panic beating through his heart at the words.

"It won't make any difference. I'll die and I'll forget and it'll be just like it was before." Sam jerks his head up, stupid and confrontational, unafraid when he should have the sense to fear. "So what's the point of all of this? You came after me as a child, back in my nursery, but you didn't kill me. Why?"

The demon's smile returns and as dark as it is, as nasty and vile, Dean prefers it to the instability of his rage. At least smiling and monologuing gives them some time. Dean glances up at the bonds around his wrists, shifting his hands while Meg isn't watching. There's not a lot of give but there's a little -- maybe enough to shift one out if he puts enough strain on them and waits for the right moment.

"Soma," the demon replies to Sam, gesturing broadly at nothing. Above them, the sky rumbles and quakes, like it's sick with something, like the heavens themselves have been poisoned. "The elixir of godhood. After centuries of watching you live and die, live and die, I realized it wasn't enough. That I had to return to my original goal, my original prize. Even though you had been reduced, I still existed in this interminable limbo, so I abandoned you to your helpless karmic tumble and set my sights on the great elixir, the drink of the gods themselves. I searched for millennia -- across the Earth and through the higher realms, appealed to every ally I had until I no longer had them, until I was alone. An outcast. The great fallen architect. Alone but for my one remaining child... But still, I searched. I would find the flower that granted eternal life." 

He reaches out, fingers grasping Sam's chin and tilting it up. The demon's expression is soft, serene, almost loving, and it makes something vicious and jealous rise in Dean's belly, makes his fingers flex and curl. He doesn't remember being anything other than this, anything other than Dean, but the words sing true anyway and Sam, whoever he was, whatever he was, has always been _his_ first, before all others. The two of them always seeing only each other first.

"And then I found you," the demon speaks softly, touching Sam not like a person but an object -- sacred, but an object nonetheless. "The soma _is_ you. It is the blood of a god."

For a moment Sam hangs there, silent and struggling and Dean can see it behind his eyes, trying to talk, trying to keep the demon talking all the while dealing with the revelations. Sam stutters for a second, tripping over the words, but urging them out.

"But I--... The poison. The... I drank the poison, right? It made me human. I'm not a god anymore."

"Nothing can change you. Not like that. Anyone can become a god with the right drink but you are _Shiva_. You can't _un_ become. The halahala reduced you, weakened you, until you were indistinguishable from a human or a worm, but for ten thousand years you have been recovering. For ten thousand years the poison has been leached from within you -- I don't know what's holding you back, why you choose to continue this stupid charade of mortality, but it's a guise, nothing more. A thin cover over the radiance of your reality. You are Lord Shiva, the Destroyer. The god who is unaffected -- eternally pure. You are the beast that ends the world. But I will take that from you."

The demon turns then, whirls away from Sam and back to the table, grabbing the knife. Dean recognizes it then: Sam's bowie knife, and his breath hitches in his throat. He struggles hard, yelling out without hesitating.

"Wait!" Dean screams, desperate. "Wait! What about me? I'm--I'm one of these gods too, right? That means I have the-- Whatever, the soma too. C'mon. Take it from me." He doesn't know how much that'll save Sam, what good it'll do for Sam to then be faced with the aftermath of that, but Dean can only deal with one problem at a time and his first priority is keeping the demon from killing Sam right here and right now. Right in front of him. "Use me."

The demon laughs though, shaking his head.

"I would accuse you of trying to trick me," he responds. "Except I think you're really just that stupid."

The demon snorts, walking up to Sam, leaning against the wall next to him before continuing. He talks to Dean but stares instead at Sam's profile. 

"I am an asura, a creature of death, and you are the god of the deva, the god of birth and rebirth -- to drink your blood would ensure eternity, but only an eternity of pain and suffering." He brushes his knife lightly over Sam's skin and Dean shivers as if it were his own. He tugs again at his bonds, working whatever slack he can, the edge of the butt of his palm just barely sinking under the tight knot.

"You don't know that," Dean says, even though he's sure that's not true. He'll do anything, say anything, right now, to keep the demon's attention away from Sam's throat, so frighteningly bared by the position the ropes hold him in.

"Besides," the demon remarks, apparently ignoring Dean, casually dragging the tip of the blade down to Sam's neck, not breaking the skin but Dean can see the thin white line left in its wake. "This is better. Perfect even. To exact my revenge and attain my immortality in the same move. When I've drained you of your godhood you will _end_ , permanently. When I have consumed your divine essence, taken it as my own and become a god, you will never again be reborn. I shall take from you--" his eyes skip up to Sam's, "--as you once took from me."

He shifts around, pushing off the wall to approach Sam from the front, and Dean is struggling like a man possessed, fear beating tympanic in his chest, wrenching against the ropes until he feels one hand slip painfully free, leaving a fair strip of skin in the cord, but he doesn't care. He's reaching up, grabbing, yanking to get his other hand free while the demon moves in, knife raised, and Dean already knows he's going to be too late.

Then there's a sudden screech from above, a shocking cry like a strike of lightning, something white and quick descending. Dean drops down automatically as his second hand comes loose, ducking away from what he's certain is going to be lightning hitting the shack, except there's no ear splitting boom, no electrical explosion of energy. Instead the demon lets out a yell of confusion and fury, and Dean hears the rapid beat of heavy wings. Hands still clapped to the side of his head, Dean looks up in time to see Castiel fighting for Sam's life, claws scratching at the demon's face as the monster slashes the knife in fruitless patterns, always only just missing Cas's belly.

Cas is protecting Sam, just like Dean had told him to.

Protecting Sam, because they were family, all of them. They shared a guardian and Cas had accepted Sam as his charge as well.

"Cas!" Sam cries out, worry in his voice, and Dean is springing to his feet to help, muscles bunching to do something when Meg's boot impacts his shoulder and sends him sprawling. He feels the air come rushing out of his lungs as his back hits the ground, hearing the wood creak and protest under him. His hands ache with the burns of the rope and he can feel the blood slicking his palms, but he's used to fighting hard, fighting roughed up and dirtied. He pushes himself forward, seeing the smirk painting her lips as her dark hair moves around her, feels himself answer with a rakish grin, teeth bared and feral.

He's just getting ready for it, really getting ready to throw himself into it, when there's a wet _thwack_ and a sudden silence and Dean's whole body goes--

Goes _cold_.

He's never felt so cold. 

It washes through him like a wave and he sways, drops into his knees like a stone and for five interminable seconds, his heart ceases to beat, seizes instead, with pain and confusion. His body is lost, convinced it’s dying when it's not and for a moment, or maybe even less, he doesn't have the presence of mind to find out why. He collapses back on his ass, legs sprawled and eyes staring outwards, hearing Sam yelling, Sam _screaming_ bloody murder, god, but it doesn't touch him. For once, he can't think of Sam. He can't think of anything.

Everything is a fog, worse than the Wyoming highway, worse than the memories of the smoke billowing out of his house and taking his mother with it. Everything is hazy and nothing makes any sense until a dead white bird is thrown over his lap.

He turns his head down, watching the feathers wiggling and wavering in the breeze, the muscles beneath them limp and the wings sprawled out haphazard like Cas would never allow. Dean lifts his hands from the floor, feels them move forward then hesitate, draw back. His fingers are flexing, the world addled and strange and something doesn't make sense. 

This doesn't make sense. 

He blinks hard, blinks to clear eyes that see clearly, and his hands come to rest on the pure white down, leaving bloody red smudges. They seem like stains. But it's nothing compared to the dark red wound gaping in the center of Castiel's chest.

"Cas?" he asks, perfectly aware that no response is coming and feeling foolish for even asking. His left hand traces the breastbone, comes to the long neck and tries to lift it, feeling it limp and dead over his arm, the frilled head dangling, beak barely parted. Castiel's blue eyes are left half open, pupils blown and staring at nothing. Dean's free hand brushes down over a wing, feeling the feathers he never really reached out and touched often. They seem waxy. Unreal.

Dean's brow furrows as he tries to remember what they felt like before and comes up blank. The thoughts trigger flashes of memory, small hands and small fingers, reaching up from his crib, white wings brushing down to him, clutching feathers against his palms.

He shifts Castiel in his arms, trying to find some arrangement of limbs that doesn't look grotesque and he wonders if this is it. If this is him going nuclear. That's what it's supposed to be, after all. This is supposed to be him slipping loose his mortal body, his mortal concerns. This is supposed to be him _becoming_ , activating whatever magical agents are in his blood that he heard so talked about but never felt.

Except he still feels nothing. Nothing but another loss in a line of so many.

He wants to laugh.

"...Guess you were wrong," Dean murmurs, looking down at what remains of his bird, wishing he knew what had happened to Ruby's body, wishing Sam had gotten the chance to say goodbye, too. He swallows hard, feeling sick. "I wasn't the person you thought I was."

He isn't this creator god. He isn't any of the things that all of these people seemed to think he was, because Cas is dead and nothing is happening. Cas is dead and he had so much devotion, so much loyalty. He had been willing to die for this, for the honor of carrying a piece of his god with him. The honor of guarding his god's earthly incarnation.

And he hadn't even gotten to do that.

Because Dean was just Dean and nothing happened.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, broken. "I'm so fucking sorry..."

He curls over, head hung, but he doesn't cry. He's beyond that. He can't find the hurt to cry, not past the shock, not past the ice cold of feeling part of his soul slip away and vanish, broken off from him. He remembers when he was six and decided he wanted to go to school alone, remembers telling Cas to stay behind and that he was going to do it by himself. He remembers his determination and then the crushing feeling when he'd stepped to far, gotten too far away from a piece of his own soul and the divide, the existential _twist_ of it, threatening to break, was like an arm wrenched too far.

He remembers too, Castiel coming for him, and the realization that wherever he was, the angel would have to be.

Except now Cas is gone, that bone irrevocably broken, that bond irrevocably destroyed, and Dean knows that there's no fixing it by running home. There is no where he can go, in no corner of this earth that he will find the missing part of himself. He is separated from it now, on the other side of some impossible divide.

"Dean!"

He can hear Sam calling for him. He cares. He knows he does. It's just hard to access, like his whole body is trying to recover from a stroke it never had.

" _Dean!"_

"Sam..." He murmurs, turning his face up slowly, a numbness spreading through him, like endorphins in the wake of a bullet wound, and he swallows, blinking like the world will become clear again.

"Hush now," the demon says, Cas's scratches still over his face, leaning in as he covers Sam's mouth with his hand. "It's over. Both of the guardians are dead and you are mine. It is as it was always meant to be."

Sam shakes his head willfully, tearing it from under the demon's hand.

"Why?" he asks and his voice is watery with tears, expression fierce with anger that Dean can't feel, still sitting sprawled on the dirty floor of the shack, the white garuda laying over his lap like a pieta. 

"Why?" Sam demands again. "You did all of this--...You killed all those people. Why did you even come here? You knew--...You _knew_ where your precious soma was the whole time. You've known since I was six months old. Why were you looking for the Trickster if you already knew?"

The demon presses the edge of the blade to Sam's neck and Dean's brow furrows, something trying to break through the static in his head, something buzzing as he stares at the glint of the metal pressed to skin. The demon leans in close, so close, and murmurs almost lovingly:

"To tell him that the age of the Maintainer...is over."

And then with one slick motion, he slits Sam's throat.

Dean sees the blood run sudden and thick and so, so red, so dark. He feels himself rock back, the sight incomprehensible to him, like looking at some impossible angle, something that doesn't make sense. It is a sight that is fundamentally at odds with his understanding of the world because Sam can't die. Sam _doesn't_ die. That's not the story. 

The demon's head darts in like a snake, mouth fastening to the wound and sucking, drinking down the blood like this is some cheap horror movie, and it looks just about as real, like all the cheesy, B-movies that Dean used to make Sam watch. Dean can see Sam's fingers, just out the top of the rope, flexing. They're clenching and then they're not, going slowly relaxed, and Dean should be--

Dean should be fighting.

He feels it just in time to let out a wretched sob, crumpling over, the loss, the grief hitting him all at once, too much. It is the immediate knowledge that he's alone, that he has lost, again. Winchester luck at work again and Dean is alone. Dean is alone. Sam is gone and Dean has no one left to fight for.

It's a few minutes later that he hears the demon draw away, let out a smack of breath like he's finishing some delicious meal and not Dean's little brother, but Dean doesn't look up. He hears the knife cutting through the ropes and the dull, flesh and bone thud of Sam's body hitting the floor. Dean's still waiting to be noticed, to see what happens to him, but he doesn't care. They won't leave him alive, he's sure, but what does fighting for life mean anymore?

His mother is gone, his father betrayed them. Ruby and Cas are dead. And Sam--

And Sam.

Dean's eyes travel slowly over the floor boards, following the raggedy line of the woodgrain, tracing it until it leads him to his brother, lying face down on the shack floor. He isn't moving. Dean's hands rest in Cas's pigmentless feathers, feels their softness stir against his skin, and he can only feel grateful that Sam's head is turned away from him.

Around him, the wind is roaring.

And the demon is laughing.

The ground quakes and Dean curls down further, waiting for the hit, for the strike, or just for merciful black, the cabin shaking apart. He can hear the squeal of wood working against nails, grinding until they're torn off and flung away, tossed into the maelstrom. It sounds like a freight train all around him and he can only just barely make out Meg's awed " _father_ " through the torrent of it. Dean shuts his eyes tightly, everything shaking, so violent now that it feels like he's being tossed around, feels like the car crash, and the memory makes his stomach swoop sickly. He can remember worrying about Sam, can remember worrying about what would happen, but now he'd do anything to trade places with himself then.

Even if he can only watch Sam for those few minutes between consciousness and his death, it's better than this, better than now.

There's one finally blast of power and then the roaring fades, not to silence but becomes more distant. Dean still feels like his skin is trembling and it takes a monumental act of will to lift his head and acknowledge that he's still alive. He wants to sob it feels so unfair.

The cabin floor is still intact but that's about it. The walls are completely gone now, blasted away, and all around in the open Dean can see that the landscape has been decimated. The sky is glowing red like blood, echoing with rage and thunder and far in the distance, along the horizon, he can hear the screams of millions.

Meg is gone.

Dean slowly puts Castiel's body on to the ground, not trying to stand, certain he can't, but he begins to crawl towards Sam, hands and knees over the gritty floor. His palms leave marks behind them, the sky making a strange, wrenching sound above him, fissures and cracks in the ground grinding the earth together. He knows it's not just Kansas. It's not 'just' anything.

The yellow-eyed demon is a god now and the world is his, no one left to fight him for it, and all the people in the middle just fodder waiting to be spit out.

Dean wants to save them. He just doesn't know how.

He reaches Sam, reaches out to touch but hesitates. Feeling Cas's still body was one thing -- the pain had been something before the physical, known before he'd even really known it, felt before he'd ever really seen it. Sam is different.

Sam is the memory of a little boy curled into his side, the two of them watching TV together in some crappy motel room. Sam is the memory of floppy hair and messy bangs and an epic pout, arms crossed and one leg stuck out to the side. Sam is training and sparring, fighting with one another and feeling something older, something like a memory of an event that never happened, a battle in a microcosm, the comedy of a earthly war parodied in shoves and grapples. 

Sam is the memory of dozens of nights curled together in a bed, denying the conventions of their society, denying everything they'd ever grown up with. The memory of being so in love with someone that the fact that you _shouldn't_ be in love with them seems irrelevant, _small,_ in the face of it.

If Dean ever believed any part of what all those demons and angels and voices from on high had told them, it was that he and Sam were meant to find each other. That he and Sam had a past that went back further than their birth, and a life beyond their deaths.

And now Dean is looking that in the face.

"Dean!"

He looks up at the sound, someone calling his name, and it seems familiar, seems like he should recognize it immediately, but it takes sight, takes his eyes landing on his father to know that it's him. He can see John making his way carefully around the fissures, gun held ready and eyes wary. He glances out to the west, to where some huge, unseen massacre is echoing horrific red light up against the clouds. Dean can still hear the screams, so loud and yet so far away, a never ending discordant chorus that makes his skin crawl.

Dean shakes his head and turns his attention back down to Sam.

The wind ruffles Sammy's flannel, making it flap a little, his hair rustling back and forth and Dean presses his lips together. He manages to lift a hand but not to bring it down, afraid of touching and finding him stiff. Dean knows death, knows that rigor can't possibly have set in yet, but he's afraid of it nonetheless. He's afraid of touching him and finding anything other than the feeling of _alive_ , of blood pumping and lungs expanding, anything less than the vital feeling of Sam beneath his fingers, an intimate memory now.

He's more afraid of this, now, than anything else in his life.

But Sam is in front of him and their father is coming and Dean-- And Dean.

And Dean needs to be able to hold his brother before anything else happens that could tear them apart. He reaches down, fingers trembling, filled to the brim with hesitation and steeling the grief beneath the plate of his sternum, trying to hold it back with breath, and reaches down to make contact.

And just before he does, Sam breathes in.

Dean throws himself back, even if a heartbeat later he wishes he'd thrown himself forward. He winces as his abused palms hit the wooden floor, staring as Sam lifts an arm, still laying on his belly as his hand coming down to press flat against the floor, pushing himself up. His knees press to the ground, supporting him on all fours. The wind whistles and zooms through the open space of the field, Sam's hair flying all over the place, and through the flicker of the dark locks, Dean can just make out the white ether glow of his brother's eyes.

"Sam..." he breathes, and Sam turns his head to look at him, eyes almost too bright, painful to look at but Dean meets them anyway. They're explosions of light, the universe bursting into intense, painful life in front of him, galactic cores twisting and turning around each other, the dust of destruction, death, spilling out of the edges.

"Dean!" their father yells, caution in his voice, and Dean knows it's exactly the wrong time for this.

Sam turns his head away from Dean, looking out over the field to where their father is standing. Dean can just make out the expression on his father's face, pained but determined and filled with regret. Dean sees him lift his gun, pointing it at Sam.

"Sammy," their father says, hand steady despite the turbulence of the world. "I'm so sorry..."

"No! Dad don't!" Dean yells, but he knows that John doesn't understand, that he thinks Dean is trying to save his brother. He isn't though.

There is no fire, no light. There's no great event. Sam doesn't even move. John is simply ash, in the wink of an eye, the remains of his being fluttering in the wind like leaves and drifting down. Dean swallows hard, having trouble tearing his eyes from the sight. His father is gone. It was a hypothetical before but now it isn't.

Killed, though, by his own foolish inability to understand. To see anything outside of his fanatical beliefs.

"Sam..." Dean murmurs and his brother turns to look at him. Dean knows he's looking into the face of a god, into the face of the god of _death_ , but he's not afraid. Not of Sam.

Sam lifts himself up, not with his hands but simply...rises, as if gravity had no effect on him and he floats in the air, perfect and serene. His shirt is still stained with blood but his throat is clean and uncut, unmarred by the demon's touch. His supernova eyes lift and land on the horizon, looking out over their ruined world, or what remains of it. 

"Mayasura," Sam speaks and not to Dean, looking out at the horizon. He sounds like Sam, just like Sam and no one else, but he is older. Infinitely old. "What have you done?"

Dean follows Sam's gaze out to where the demon vanished, where the world is bleeding. He can distantly see the monster's titanic body, can hear its heinous screams.

He looks back at his brother.

“I thought--I thought he _killed_ you,” he says, still hardly able to believe that this is real.

“I am eternal,” Sam replies. “I exist so long as life exists and reign so long as men fear death. There is no hand that could end me.” He smiles a little, looking to Dean. “None but yours.”

Dean stares at him for a long time, trying to understand, trying to see whatever cosmic sight that Sam sees, but he realizes, in the end, it doesn't matter. He doesn't care. Sam is here. Sam is with him. The two of them until the world ends.

In the distance there is a terrible shudder, screech of metal against stone, and all around them the screams echo. All around them the endless limbs of the demon's monstrous body are rising.

Dean looks out at the destruction.

"...What do we do?" he asks, feeling lost. The world is ravaged and everyone is gone. Everyone but him and Sam and the demon has become a god, something so beyond them that Dean doesn't even know where to start. All he can do is hope.

All he can do is put his faith in Sam.

Sam's eyes drip ether light, tendrils flowing out into the universe and his whole body perfectly still even as the world trembles before him. A fully realized god of death.

"Let me, Dean," he asks, all that indescribable power in one tender vessel, held back, contained by the only thing more powerful: Sam's unquenchable will. "Let me destroy the world."

Dean knows he was put here to stop this, to fight Sam. If Cas wasn't wrong, if they weren't all wrong, then Dean is here to become Sam's equal and opposite -- the god of the devas, here to vanquish the Destroyer, like he was meant to. But the world is mistaken if it thinks he'll ever hurt Sam. Sam is beautiful like this, fully realized, complete and unending. The yellow-eyed demon is everywhere, in every pore of the world's thin skin, creeping into every crevice, and Dean failed. He failed to stop the bastard.

Sam is floating in the air, a malevolent messiah. The scythe that will reap the world.

"Do it," Dean murmurs, standing there before the end of the world and watching his power flower and flow, the scent of death everywhere around him. 

And Dean believes, still, that Sam will save them all.

Sam lifts his hand, the sun sparking pale fire in his palm. It is so small, so plain, and it splits apart like atoms, nuclear bright and terrible. The fire blossoms like a lotus, flames as petals curling outwards. Sam draws it back like an arrow to nock, arms so long and stance so perfect, the promise of a thousand lifetimes spread across the expanse of his cheek.

And he smiles.

In an instant world burns, set in flame with no warning, sudden and intense, and white fire consumes everything, purifies everything. The demon screams and Dean can hear it echoing off of the corners of the world, echoing through the curve of the atmosphere. Dean can't see far but he can see the demon's worm-like body writhing, a behemoth twisting out of the earth as the fire devours him, streaks across the land like someone threw a match to gasoline. Dean ducks down, covering his eyes before the might of his little brother, the wind blowing against him like an F5, scattering everything. Dean has nothing to clutch to as the world claws in on itself, tectonic plates crumbling out into space. 

Everything burns in the face of Sam's radiance and in that moment, he releases the arrow.

Life ends in one shock wave, the seas vanish and evaporate in an instant, molten rock collapsing and crushing together, the planet aging backwards into time. Reversing back towards an infant state, something the demon can't have.

This, here, now, is Sam's divine right. His birth right. 

Everything is over in a flash, less than a collection of heartbeats.

And Dean sees the world end.

\-----

At the end of the world, and before it begins, there is a kind of cotton thick warmth, and nothing else.

Dean is awake, whole and aware and standing on nothing at all. There is no falling, no gravity, no space even in which to fall if there were. There isn't light, exactly, but it's not dark either. What remains, or what it starts as, is a confused series of parts, everything shoved in a box and waiting, and all around him is the empty areas. The places where things are _not_.

The places where there is only nothing, and those spaces devoid even of air.

It cannot be felt, or seen, or smelled, or anything else, because it _isn't_ , inherently.

If Dean were still human, still trapped in that life, his mind wouldn't have been able to handle it. But he's not human, not here, not now, and he looks around, still thinking like a human even if he isn't.

"Sam?" he calls, because Sam always comes first. Then, "Cas?" because there has never been a time when Dean couldn't hear the shuttered flutter of wings. Everything, though, is silent, save for the hollow nothing sound of the vacuum, a sound that is the opposite of sound.

But Dean, being Dean, still finds himself regarding his surroundings, or lack there of, as real. So he walks. With legs that he's not sure are real and with eyes he's not sure can see, he walks forward, casting no shadow. He knows he should be scared, should be worried at least but he isn't. Worry doesn't exist yet. 

He knows this place isn't normal, isn't natural. He knows that every hunter instinct in him should be screaming but it isn't. He isn't.

After the power and force of the demon, after the beautiful chaos of Sam's ascension, Dean can only appreciate the peace of this place -- no cold, no heat, no sound, no energy. This place, this...whatever it is, small and infinite, is at least a reprieve.

And after all that he's been through, Dean finds himself willing to accept that, the nothingness of it, in return for not having to lose again.

He's so damned tired of losing.

So he walks. He's not sure for how long or how far. He doesn't have a watch on but he knows, instinctively, that time can exist here no more than light, that distance is no more real than the legs he's walking on. But he walks anyway, for the memory of it. For the familiarity of the feeling, knowing that only that; knowing only he is real. He can't walk but he can remember the act of it, so he continues on, into perceptions of what light used to be. After a while he shuts his eyes, but the view is exactly the same. What is inside of him is outside of him, an infinite loop, the space inside of his mind identical to the space outside of it and sometimes he walks through the internal space before switching back to the external, always ending up walking the exact same steps. 

He feels strange. He feels different, but it's hard to define how. Cas isn't here and yet he is and Dean doesn't know how to comprehend that. He doesn't know what to do with the half-complete thoughts of completion, doesn't know what to do with the unfamiliar sensation of being complete within himself, doesn't know how to _be_ that, to exist within one body and mind, one soul, so he doesn't think about it. He doesn't question it. He just keeps walking.

The world is over.

It takes him a while to come around to it. At first, just to realize it, and then later accept it. 

Wherever he is isn't some pocket dimension or other world. This isn't just in his head -- or it is in his head. It's just that his head is everything that's left. The world is gone. Every person who ever lived is gone. Not dead but _gone_ , erased from existence, their very being undone. And it's not just that. Not just the Earth. The sun and all the stars, every galaxy in the sky, every life that ever was or ever could be had unraveled, vanished in an instant. Even space, even the distance between those stars is gone, everything real and everything potential condensed down to the infinitesimal, undone and packed away on Dean's say so.

He knows that he should feel bad for that, should feel some sense of guilt for his part in this, but he doesn't. He wonders if this place even as room for feelings like that.

All he knows is that the world is over and he played a big part in that. All he knows is that there's nothing here to gain, nothing here to lose, and he exists.

And so, for a while, he does just that.

He just exists.

Everything is the same here, a thousand years in an instant, an instant spread across a thousand years. His inescapably human thoughts begins to question, to try and count and time it, but the numbers slip away, meaningless. They're invisible, symbols without concept and he tries to catch them as they drift by. Maybe it takes him eons to be ready, but the reality is that it is all the same. All of time existing only at once.

When he finds Sam, the world has still only just ended, and will always be only just ending.

"Sam," he breathes out, feeling the first thing he's felt in a long time -- relief. Joy. The beginnings of what he remembers humanity to be.

Sam is suspended in the void, his legs curled up and hands drifting. He is both naked and clothed, edges of the void wrapped over his skin, and his hair drifts against his cheeks with a breeze that he remembers but isn't real. Dean forgets what the ground means, forgets to care about it, and it ceases to be, and he drifts next to Sam, wanting to reach out and touch. But he's scared.

He remembers the feeling of fear and invents it, creates it from nothing, and suddenly he's scared of so many things. That he'll touch and nothing will happen. That he'll touch and something will. That when Sam looks up it won't be everything he remembers Sam to be. But Sam is here and Dean is here, and there's no way they couldn't come together.

When Dean's fingers contact Sam's arm, they invent touch together, and Sam looks up.

He smiles and it's beautiful, as beautiful as the smile that ended the world but so completely different. Dean remembers years of that smile, recalls then in an instant that stretches out forever.

"Dean," Sam says, and Dean remembers how to smile himself. And shortly, he remembers how to wonder.

"...Where are we?" he asks finally, the first time he's ever wanted to know. He looks around and actually _sees_ things for the first time, actually looks at them and realizes that this isn't where he's meant to be.

"At the end," Sam replies. He smiles a little, shrugging as he tips his head to the side. "And the beginning."

"Riddles, good," Dean quips sarcastically, shaking his head. "That's what we need right now."

"Don't be an asshole."

"Don't be a smartass." It feels too normal, too good to have this. Even after the world ends they're still them. They're still together. Dean feels that strangeness again, that _knowing_ in the back of his head, but he's still not ready to touch it. He's not ready to be anything other than Dean.

Sam moves a little closer and Dean can see concern in his eyes, concern and a thousand ages, lifetimes that Dean doesn't remember yet. Dean knows that Sam is waiting, waiting on _him_ , and he feels the first ticklings of shame, feels that emotion being born inside of him, the first creation he regrets.

"Are you alright?" Sam lifts a hand, pressing it to the skin of Dean's shoulder.

"Yeah, s'just--" Dean shrugs and looks around again, forgetting and then remembering again the concept of a horizon line. The minute he remembers it he misses it, wishes to see something other then the endless void. "It's a lot, is all. The world is _gone_ , Sammy. It's gone. Everything--...Every _one_." Dean feels sadness prick, feels his brows press together. "Dad."

Sam's expression is sympathetic, his hand tightening on Dean's shoulder.

"Not gone, Dean. Just not here yet," he replies, and the words don't make sense.

"I don't understand. Everything that happened... Ruby. Cas. The demon. The world is gone. How can we still be here?”

But Sam shakes his head.

"Mayasura was wrong about many things," he replies. "But he was right about one. We cannot cease to be. We do not _end_ , Dean. Not us. Our being is not finite."

"But he was?"

"He always was."

The words barely make sense. There's a part of Dean that understands them, that knows exactly what this is, what's happening, but he's still reticent to acknowledge it. He knows, somehow, that to do so is also to leave himself behind. To leave this life behind.

He shakes his head.

"What do we do...?" Dean asks, not used to looking to Sam for direction, not used to relying on his little brother, but he's lost here. There is no right or wrong here, there literally is no up or down let alone ground and sky. There's nothing to orient himself by. Dean is a hunter by nature, a do-er, and there is nothing to do here, not with hands: the only tools he's ever truly understood.

"Not 'we'. You," Sam corrects and looks at Dean expectantly, but Dean shakes his head. "I've done my part. I did what I had to."

"You ended the _world_ ," Dean reminds, but not with accusation. He'd given permission after all. He'd been the one to let Sam do it. The others had warned him, told him to kill Sam before it came to that. All the world had screamed for Sam's blood and not only had Dean let him live, he'd given him permission to end everything. “Everything-- It's _over.”_

But Sam, Sam shakes his head, a slow smile creeping across his face, like a secret.

"It's not over. It is _never_ over. The wheel is always turning, Dean. I did what I had to. What I have always done. And now you must do what you have always done."

There's a promise in Sam's words, a promise that's been made before and Dean starts with realization, watching Sam in the nothing darkness.

"You had to end the world to save it," Dean says, understanding sharp and like ice breaking, like water breaking through and beginning to flow again. The beginning of everything.

The demon had been everywhere, part of everything. He'd invaded the world and twisted himself up inside of it, become so irrevocably part of it that there hadn't been a way to kill him without destroying everything, and no way to save the world from his influence. It would have been hell on earth. It would have been nothing but eternal suffering and strife, nothing but people dying, drowning, forever caught in the demon's vicious power. It would have been the apocalypse.

Sam just smiles, something so serenely gentle, and he opens his hand. In his palm is the heart of the world, the nexus of everything that Dean has ever known. The spark that starts the universe.

"...I could never end the world that created you," Sam replies, offering the spark to him without any guile. No hate, no resentment, no anger. Nothing one would expect from a god of death. Instead, Dean sees only an infinite love.

"Sam..."

"I can't create," he interrupts Dean, shaking his head. "That's your job." He tucks the energy into Dean's hand, curling his brother's fingers around it. Behind Sam, huge black wings open, the shape of a swallow's, and Dean chokes on a sob.

"Ruby."

She and Sam are one, as they were always meant to be. Dean shuts his eyes, clutching the light of the world to his chest as he feels Castiel open up within him, the broad white wings part of him now, no separate creature. No divided being. Whole.

A god of rebirth.

Dean can _feel_ his brother's smile, his pleasure at Dean's realization.

"Goodbye, Dean."

Dean's breath hitches, no curiosity now, because he understands beyond such a thing, knows everything like Sam knows, the two of them the end results of the equation that Sam was always trying to solve. He doesn't say goodbye, though. Even as inhuman as he is now, even as he feels the memories of a hundred thousand lives that came before this one and knows himself, knows the entirety of himself for one blistering instant -- he's not ready to say goodbye.

He'll never be ready to say goodbye to Sam, no matter what face Sam takes.

In all of the lives that they have ever faced each other, he has never seen his opponent as he sees him now -- not as that ancient divine being, that creature that was always his equal and opposite, vying for destruction even as he fought for creation. Now all he sees is Sam. As Dean holds that supernova light in his hands, as he starts the world anew, whole and complete and godly, all Dean sees is Sam, and the next time they meet, it will not be as enemies.

He knows, after all, as the stars form once more around him, blossom into being, that there is no such thing as a true goodbye. 

Nothing ever truly ends.


	6. Epilogue

Dean wakes up with a sudden in take of breath on Christmas Day, the snow drifting down lazily onto the Kansas landscape outside of his window. One hand is clutching his sheets, the other pressed back against his mattress, and he's breathing hard, memory rushing in like a ghost, cold and sudden.

In the same moment that he doesn't know where he is he suddenly remembers, the bed under him his bed and the room around him his room. At once his mind is divided, seeing two realities at once, and maybe more -- seeing a hundred possibilities and finding nothing strange or odd about them. He remembers who is is, who he was, and who he will be, all at the same time, and his mind, both mortal and not, accepts that without stumbling.

He can still see unlight of the void, can still see the lilt of Sam's lips. He can still see the fires of Tripura and all the thousands of lifetimes in between, but when he raises his head he knows that this is not that world.

He knows this world. This is his world.

And not his world.

There is no Castiel here. There never was -- at least, not outside of Dean.

This isn't a world with room for angels and demons, or great white and black garuda and their charges. This isn't a world with ghosts or black dogs or curses, and no hunters waiting on the edge of the night to hold it back. 

Castiel isn't gone though. Dean can still feel him. He can still feel the broad white wings within himself, though they're tucking themselves away now. Still there, always there, but soft and silent. Dean listens to the thud of his mortal heart, the exquisite energy of it, and he smiles.

There's a smell creeping up the stairs and into his room, something like crisping meat, hot and salty, and it makes Dean's mouth water. He can hear voices, muted at times and squalling the next, the laughter of a family. Dean remembers like it was yesterday(because it was) that he's home for Christmas.

Walking downstairs is a surreal experience, each stair creaking with an aching familiarity, a childhood home that he's grown up in, this time, walls lined with photos in frames hung crooked, wallpaper an ugly paisley that Dean knows, without even having to search his mind, that his mother loves. And his dad was always a pushover, when it came to her.

Carrie darts out from the kitchen, thirteen years old and pigtails flying as David chases her.

"Come back here you little shit!" he yells, flush with anger, and Carrie may be younger than him, but she's faster, and her grin says she knows it.

"David!" their mother's voice calls from the kitchen, hot with discipline but distracted. "Language!"

Dean pauses on the stairs, taking a steadying breath. He needs it. He feels his dad's hand come down on his shoulder, saying nothing as he casually passes him in the hallway with nothing but a quick smirk. Dean follows with a wistful smile, his confusion washing back. The knowledge of the universe is fading from him, settling back into that corner tucked away deep inside. He doesn't need it now, not anymore, and he was never like Sam. He never needed to know.

He walks into the doorway, leaning against the wood trim. His mother is cooking up a storm, making pancakes at a frenzied pace, her small body taking up so much space in the kitchen as she moves from one surface to another. John manages to get a kiss in against her cheek, but she pushes him away with a grimace and Dean can't help but chuckle. He remembers clearly all the times, throughout his life, his mother has complained about people trying to divide her attention. She hates it.

John takes the rebuke with an amicable grumble, searching around for a coffee mug in the sink, dumping one out and declaring it fit as he pours the black hot liquid into its slightly smudgy interior. 

Dean knows this family. He remembers this family. They're new but they've always existed. The world has only just sprung into being but all of time and history sprung with it. There was a yesterday and a day before that and one before that. There were wars and revolutions and cave paintings and they all happened, not fabricated or false. The entire history of the universe was made in the same instant, and it only makes sense to Dean because he made it with his own two hands. 

These are not figments but people. His parents and his family, each real and full of faults and hopes and desires. This world was not created for him but _by_ him, just like the last one, but he's learned some things since then. This is the world that was meant to be.

"Dean," his mother says, looking up with a smile and a faint sheen of sweat shining on her brow. "Merry Christmas, sweetie. How'd you sleep? I heard you get in late last night."

"I'm fine, mom," he replies, crossing his arms over his bare chest. When she speaks he remembers the long drive from Missouri, from the house he shares with his girlfriend(Cassie, his mind supplies, and the minute he recalls the name he recalls everything about her -- meeting her back when he'd dropped out of college, when he'd taken up that trucking gig, when he was a mess of the kid and god, she'd cleaned him up good, got him into culinary school-- Yes, he remembers).

Here in his childhood home the air is cool with winter, but he feels warm, full to bursting. 

"Can I help?" he asks his mom, always having been her helper, her back up.

His mom gets that look of complete relief, and Dean knows that, as usual, his siblings have been blissfully ignorant of their mother's harried schedule. He just chuckles and walks into the kitchen, reaching out to grab the non-stick pan with about-to-burn pancakes, flipping them easily before they get too brown, remembering another life just as clearly as this one: remembers making them for someone else, another little brother, in motel rooms over a piss poor griddle. He can't help but smile.

Dean knows his mom misses him. After all, he's the only one who ever helped her out around the house, with four kids running amok. He doesn't mind coming home. His family is kind of insane, but he loves them. He's used to being a babysitter.

Breakfast is a noisy affair, as it always is whenever Dean's home.

He's twenty six and settled down in St. Louis where Cassie has her gig as a reporter. Their moms are both badgering them about marriage, but the truth is that they're happy as they are. They're committed, but marriage -- the dress, the vows, the pagentry -- it isn't really their thing. They've had a couple of conversations about kids, though, talked about making little carpet rats of their own. He doesn't see his family as often as he'd like, but he still comes home for Christmas -- Cassie couldn't make it this year, but he suspects that next year she'll come with him to make the big announcement. Dean's not worried about conceiving. Winchesters have nothing but good genes.

Sitting at the table is mundane and surreal at the same time: foreign and new while at the same time everything familiar. Dean feels like he's meeting, for the first time, the people he's known all his life. And he is.

His little brother, Liam, not so little anymore, is in the middle of college, working on some sports therapy major that both Dean and John heartily approve of. There's a little secret part of them that's hoping Liam will get a job with some big football team and get them season passes.

David is the next youngest, working his way through high school and all pimples and awkwardness( _nothing_ like Dean was like, at his age, Dean thinks, with a point of pride). He was a pretty bright and happy kid, but he's turned into sullen, angry teenager recently. Dean knows it upsets his mom but Dean's sure it's just a phase. The kid will grow and get over it and apologize for being an ass to his parents. It's the way of things.

Carrie is the little baby girl of the Winchester family and a spitfire, the apple of John's eye as she scores home run after home run in her softball league. She's annoying and combative, taking precocious way past cute, but she's also got the biggest heart Dean's ever seen.

Except for one person.

The one person not here. Who was never here.

This is no perfect world, though. No special heaven he set up for himself. His mom and dad fight. Once, when he was twelve, they almost got a divorce, things getting bad when his mom miscarried their fifth child. Dean got into a car accident when he was nineteen, leaving him in a wheelchair for three months, on crutches for two more after that, and ruined the football scholarship he'd been working so hard for -- what led to him dropping out. 

And when he was a kid, there was an electrical fire in the study at the end of the hallway. It started in the ceiling, but no one was hurt.

Just his dad's old desk and some books.

This is the real world, reborn fresh and new, even if no one else remembers that that wasn't always the case. 

This is the real world now and everyone is safe. Everyone is saved.

Everyone except...well.

Dean follows his dad outside after breakfast, the two of them shoveling snow out of the driveway and off of the sidewalk. David is supposed to be helping, but he's being more of a pain in the ass than a help and John and Dean peg him with a few snowballs to motivate him, but instead he just gets pissy and tromps inside. John just huffs a laugh, uninterested, as always, in any kind of teenaged drama, and Dean leans on the handle of his shovel with a smirk. This world or any other, his dad is always into the same old ex-marine crap.

In the driveway Dean sees the Impala, the same one he remembers, the one that their dad bought back when he came home from the war. It's not quite the one that Dean remembers though. This one is dinged up from three Winchester boys learning to drive in her, not from a hundred nights spent hunting monsters. Her shocks still squeak and she rocks whenever they pile in, but there's no weapons cache in the back, no pile of fake badges and IDs in her glove compartment. Instead it's full with maps and insurance papers and a bag of the special mints their mom likes, the ones she'd always hand out to the kids in the back, popping the last one into her husband's mouth as he'd drive them home.

They have no idea that they once had another son. They have no idea that the world ever was any other way than it is -- and really, it never was. This is the world as it is, the world as it always will be, both new and old, eternal in either direction, and Dean is the only one who remembers anything different. It doesn't make him feel lonely. He's glad that he doesn't have to share it with anyone.

Later they go back in for presents, everyone sitting around the living room and watching as Carrie and David tear into theirs, the both of them still young enough to have that gleeful look. Everyone else takes their time, flooding the floor with torn wrapping paper, and the crackle of the fire reminds Dean of another home, makes him feel warm and at peace.

When the presents are all open and Carrie is sitting over by the tree, talking with David as she shoves candy into her face, Dean pushes himself up from the couch. His mother lifts her head from his father's shoulder, looking over at him curiously.

"I'm going for a walk," Dean announces, his dad and Liam glancing up before returning to mumbling together over the sports scores in the paper.

"I'll come with you," his mother replies, putting down her book.

"No." Dean shakes his head. "I'll be fine."

"Dean, honey," she says, frowning and he rolls his eyes with good humor, remembering her guilt trips -- remembering growing up with her and growing up without her at the same time. This woman isn't the perfect dead memory of his past, a mother who could never do wrong because she couldn't do _anything_. This woman raised him, fought with him, punished him. She can be passive aggressive. She pulls out the crocodile tears to get her way. She frowns at gay couples and Dean when dated a guy for like five minutes, back in his first year of college, they'd had a fight so bad that he'd almost walked out the door and never come back.

She's not perfect. She's human. And alive.

And Dean is a god who remembers a world where that wasn't the case.

"It's freezing cold and Christmas besides," she reminds. "I'm not going to let you go wandering around by yourself."

"Mom. Really." He smiles at her, but maybe a little exasperated. "I'll be fine. Besides, I kind of want some alone time."

"You'd think you'd get enough of that the rest of the year," she says with a little huff. "I only get to see you every so often, you know. And you only get one Christmas with us a year--"

"Mary, let the boy go for a walk," John says, without looking up from the newspaper. "He's survived this long. I think he'll be okay." 

His mom makes a disgruntled noise and picks her book up again and Dean can't help but huff a laugh as he grabs his coat, too pleased, too happy with everything to feel anything close to bad. He pulls the winter jacket onto his shoulders, remembering the year that Cassie bought it for him, and steps outside, shutting the door behind him. He's sure there'll be drama later. There always is. Somehow, now though, he finds the thought a relief. It is just as it should be: family.

Outside, the world is crisp with snow, just breaking out of its placenta, stretching its legs like a wobbly new born colt. Dean can feel it under him, around him. He can still feel the lingering presence of his divinity, but he's already beginning to push it away. He doesn't need it now. He lives this life not because he has to but because he wants to. Because he has someone to meet.

He understands that now.

They were all wrong. The yellow eyed man, the asuras, the devas. Dean and his beloved adversary hadn't been trapped in the cycle of reincarnation, in mortal form, not for eons. They'd chosen to continue because it was only here, like this, that they could be together.

Human. Flawed and perfect and together.

A few errand flakes float through the air as Dean makes his way out onto the sidewalks. The streets are mostly empty, a silence in winter that feels like peace. Every so often he steps on a small mound of snow, listening to it crunch. His hands are tucked into his pockets to keep warm and he looks down, nimbly avoiding the occasional patch of ice. Their house is out in the suburbs, away from the bustle of the central city and it doesn't take Dean long at all to leave the sidewalk for the gravel on the side of the road, long and leading out of Lawrence. The sight alone -- the blacktop stretching out in front of him, open and ready to take anyone out into the American nowhere -- reminds Dean of another life. 

It reminds him of riding around in an old black car, another little brother sitting in the back with him, the two of them exchanging secrets like candy. Tapping morse code out into each other's palms.

Sam.

 _Sam_.

Dean will never not know him.

He misses him already, couldn't not, but he doesn't feel sad. Sam may be gone, but the truth of Sam, the layer beneath that, remains. It is impermeable, undeniable. Sam and Dean are just variations on the theme but the theme itself, the notes beneath, will always be true. The eternal gods they will always be.

And Dean will find Sam again. Not this life, he knows -- his counterpart, his opponent, his eternal equal and opposite, is still waiting to be born, the sacrifice he made to end the world one not easily recovered from.

But recover he would. After all, they were no finite thing, just as Sam had said.

Maybe not this life. Maybe not even the next. But they would find one another again.

It hardly mattered. Dean knows it's just a matter of waiting and he has all the time in the world. Literally.

Walking down the road, nothing in sight in front of him but the woods and the snow and the silence, Dean doesn't think he did too bad a job if he does say so himself. His world is whole and beautiful and full of marvelous imperfections -- Dean can't wait to show Sam all of it, to show him all the exquisit chaos of life he has made. He can't wait to see where they go next, who they become next.

A car passes him, taking the turn that leads out to the interstate, and it kicks up snow and sleet behind it. Dean keeps walking, past the turn off and on through the cottony thick quiet of winter, the scent of Christmas welcoming and behind him. He'll go back soon. He'll turn around and go back and have Christmas dinner as the early evening comes in. He'll get drunk with his parents and Liam and everyone will watch whatever kitschy holiday movie their mom picks out.

And when the holidays pass he'll get in his car and drive back down to Missouri, to his home with Cassie, and he'll live his life. This time, for the first time, he isn't afraid of it.

At the end of the road Dean looks up at the grey white sky and smiles for no reason.

It's not over. It's only just beginning.

After all, the wheel is always turning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full notes located [here](http://lexicale.livejournal.com/57347.html#cutid1).


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